


Like It Always Was

by okaynextcrisis



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Jedi Apprentice Series - Jude Watson & Dave Wolverton
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2018-09-20 23:37:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 34,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9521105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaynextcrisis/pseuds/okaynextcrisis
Summary: After the death of his estranged uncle Dooku, photographer Qui-Gon becomes the guardian of his teenage cousin, Obi-Wan, with the help of his old friend, Tahl, and under the skeptical eye of Dooku's lawyer, Palpatine.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated with gorgeous banner by Arkhia!

"Your wife says she'll be in town tonight, and you're taking her to dinner," was the message waiting for Qui-Gon Jinn when he landed at JFK a little after four in the morning, rumpled and worn out and more than a little irritable after a six hour flight on a tiny, shaky little plane that quivered with every breeze and then a nine hour flight in the very back row of an overstuffed, screamingly loud jet. Outside, the world was soft and hushed, still blanketed in darkness; inside, the terminal was bright, glaring, the intrusive lights and distant, grating sound of vacuuming making his head ache. When was the last time he’d eaten, he wondered? Not on the plane…not before…

“Sir?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to bring the young woman in the brightly patterned hijab behind the desk into focus. "Ex-wife," he corrected, more out of habit than anything else. “Did she say anything else?”

“That’s all the message says.”

Of course it was; with him out of the country and his phone out of service, Tahl would have left the message with his agent. Mace Windu, who’d been promoting Qui-Gon’s work and collecting his ten percent since Qui-Gon had sold his first photograph more than ten years before, was pragmatic and reliable and above all things _concise_. Tahl could have talked for half an hour and those few words would still have been all the information Mace would have relayed. Of course, knowing Tahl, she would have hung up from such a conversation with a working knowledge of Mace’s hopes, dreams, academic shortcomings, regrettable former lovers, and husband’s favorite restaurant, and Mace still wouldn’t have learned anything except that she was coming to New York, and expecting Qui-Gon to take her to dinner.

He looked past the desk, out the darkened windows, fuzzy shapes moving indistinctly in the distance. Was she on her way, even now? Would she be striding through this airport, this gate, this terminal, maybe? Or was she still three hours behind, answering a barrage of texts as she stood in line at the Starbucks at LAX? Was she grabbing a last few hours of sleep, throwing clothes in a suitcase, running through her notes for whatever exalted business venture was bringing her back to the east coast?

“Will that be all, sir?”

“Yes,” he answered belatedly. “Thank you. Have a good day,” he offered, although if that day would be spent dealing with similarly befuddled and sleep-deprived travelers, he had his doubts.

_Sleep_ , he told himself, stumbling through the blue-carpeted wasteland of John F. Kennedy International Airport towards the faint hope of an exit sign. Sleep, and food, and a shower, and he’d be feeling halfway to human again.

And tonight Tahl would be here.

How long had it been since he’d seen her in person…months? Over a year?

The way finally cleared, the crowd before him trickling away, to apartments or hotels or the bracing slap of caffeine, and Qui-Gon pushed through the final doors, the cool early-morning air on his face a welcoming caress. He closed his eyes to the rush of traffic, the people brushing past him, the streets damp from a recent rain, taking a deep breath of exhaust fumes and sweat and newly-poured cement.

It was good to be home.

He collapsed into a cab (one of the real advantages to his six-foot-four height being an ability to stand out to cab drivers and bartenders the world over), mumbled his address, and by the time they hit the bridge, he was dead asleep.

* * *

Fifteen hours later, Qui-Gon stood in the lobby of Tahl’s customary hotel, an aggressively modern building he ordinary wouldn’t have wanted to be dragged into if he were bleeding on the street, watching the bank of elevators go up, and down, and up again. A pair of meticulously polished stainless steel doors slid open to release another batch of strangers, Tahl still not among them. He hadn't noticed the bitter cold the tourists awaiting their Uber were so vociferously complaining of, but he felt the chill in here, in the concrete floors and bare floor-to-ceiling windows, amidst the investment bankers and politicos rapping quick-fire orders to assistants and assorted hangers-on, each sparing a puzzled glance for the tall man waiting alone. He nodded politely. He could call, her number probably hadn't changed, he could wait at the bar--they always found each other eventually—but…

“You look terrible.”

He could feel the smile forming on his face, unguarded and easy, even as he was turning to take in his oldest friend.

She'd obviously come from whatever corporate spectacle had called her from California: there was a blazer over her black dress, something wine-colored and leathery that was professional in a way Qui-Gon could not in any lifetime have managed to be. Her heels brought them eye to eye. Her wry smile made Qui-Gon’s chest ache for home, suddenly, wherever that might be, here in this city in which he’d lived for his entire adult life.

“Whereas you,” he said softly, closing the distance between them, “look lovelier than ever.”

“I know,” she informed him, a smile playing with her lips, and then she was wrapping her arms around him, heedless of executives and trailing bellhops streaming around them, the two of them pressed together, there in the middle of the lobby of the most pretentious hotel in New York City.

She did not say _I missed you_ ; she never did.

She pulled away first; she always did. “Dinner?”

* * *

The hotel restaurant was slightly more bearable than the lobby, at least to Qui-Gon. The space was louder, maybe, but the voices were hushed, like the gentle babbling of a brook in the distance. The wood floors seemed warmer, somehow, even against the ubiquitous subway tile of the walls. The exposed lightbulbs hung from the dark ceiling reminded him of the contraband Christmas lights Tahl had illegally strung up in her dorm room at Exeter, taking them down before a rumored inspection, gamely tacking them back up again after.

Maybe it was just that she was there to laugh when he reminded her of it.

“What is it you like about this place, anyway?” he asked her.

She smiled. “I have fond memories of a room or two.”

Qui-Gon took a sip of wine, hoping the duck of his head and the dim light hid the heat in his face. He did, as well.

“How was your trip?” she asked. “You came back in one piece this time, at least.”

As a photographer, Qui-Gon had seen his share of disasters. He’d seen lives torn apart without warning, thriving cities crumbled into rubble, people searching in wreckage for bodies damaged beyond recognition. But it was the man-made disasters that lurked behind his closed eyelids and seized up his chest: the bullets ripping through the air, heedless of their target; the shrapnel digging into innocent flesh; the tight jaws and hollow eyes of parents comforting their children through the blast of yet another explosion, the one that might be their last.

But he didn’t want to talk about that tonight. He didn’t want to talk about what he’d seen, what he'd heard, what he knew was still happening, while he ordered wine and thought about the soft sheets upstairs.

“About what you’ve heard,” he settled on. “How’s Muja?”

The multinational tech conglomerate for whom Tahl was currently serving as senior Vice President might have made the phone in his pocket, as well as the computer back at his loft, but when Qui-Gon imagined Tahl's day-to-responsibilities there, he pictured something akin to a nest of besuited vipers, each waiting for a moment's weakness to strike.

The knowing look in Tahl’s eyes told him she saw and accepted the dodge, at least for now. “A war zone,” she said dryly. “Have you spoken to Dooku recently?”

The room was colder, then, as though an arctic wind had swept in, bearing Qui-Gon’s uncle with it, along with his silences and disapproval and carefully-worded disappointment.

Tahl reached across the table and put his wine in his hand, molding his fingers around the glass. Qui-Gon did not take a sip.

“He called me a few weeks ago, wanting to know how to get in touch with you.”

He frowned. “What did you tell him?”

“That I haven’t heard from you and have no idea how you can be reached,” she said patiently. Qui-Gon was once again reminded that she was smarter than he was.

He nodded. “Thank you.”

It wasn’t that Qui-Gon wasn’t grateful. Dooku had raised him after his parents had died…at least, he’d fed and housed him, when he wasn’t being fed and housed by the finest of boarding schools. He'd sent money. (Qui-Gon’s parents' money, but still.) He’d signed permission slips. (Put in front of him by his far more sympathetic secretary, Qui-Gon was sure of it.)

But Qui-Gon was in no mood to reopen old wounds tonight.

He put his glass down and covered Tahl’s hand with his. The tilt of her head accepted his wordless apology.

“Are you flying back tomorrow?” he asked softly.

“First thing in the morning,” she replied. If there was regret in her voice, he couldn’t find it. “In fact..if I want to get some sleep tonight, I think I’ll have to cut dinner short.”

He hadn’t thought he'd behaved _that_ badly. “Tahl…”

The quirk of her lips reminded him that she was much smarter than he was. “Are you coming?”

As if she ever, ever, needed to ask.

* * *

By the time the elevator doors whispered shut, his lips were on hers; by the time they slid open again on Tahl's floor, his hands were under her dress.

It wasn’t always like this. Sometimes dinner was just dinner, a few hours of nostalgia, two old school friends catching up before going their separate ways; once it had been a stopover, a weekend in Amsterdam they never mentioned again.

No matter how long it had been, they always fit together as though they had never been apart.

Tahl produced a key card; he buried his face in her neck while she slipped it through the lock until it disengaged, and then they were half-falling into the room, the door closing behind them. It would be worse again when she left, he knew that; one of these days, she’d meet someone, and this really would be the last time, he knew that…

Then her legs were around his waist, and it didn’t matter anymore.

He realized, dimly, that his phone was ringing in the pocket off his jacket. He solved the problem by shrugging out of his jacket, one arm at a time, and then shedding it on the floor.

He lifted her up onto the tiny kitchen counter (she'd gotten a room with a kitchenette this time? It must have been the only room available; Tahl didn’t cook even in her own house) and she wrapped herself more securely around him. Her fingers found the tie in his hair. He closed his eyes, letting her touch and her scent and the loose stands of her hair wash over him like a benediction. _He was home, he was home, he was home_ , like a drum beat through his veins, here in a darkened hotel room he’d never seen before in his life, and would never step foot in again.

The phone was still ringing.

He broke away from Tahl, briefly, regretfully, to fumble on the floor inside his jacket. He’d turn the damn thing off, or throw it through the window, he didn’t care which—

He saw the number lighting up the small screen, and his skin went cold.

He knew that number.

Even as he was thumbing across his phone, hands suddenly heavy, to accept the call, even as he was managing a terse greeting, even as Sheev Palpatine, Esq., was identifying himself (needlessly) and working his way up to the words, Qui-Gon knew.

He tried to take in the details: the time, the place, the numbers he’d wish he knew later. He promised Palpatine he'd be in touch. He thanked him for calling. He hung up.

He realized he was still crouched on the floor.

Above him, Tahl was still perched on the counter. Her dress was pulled back down over her knees, her hair still loose and wild. Her voice was gentle. "Qui?"

“Dooku’s dead,” he repeated, the act of uttering the words aloud making them suddenly, irreversibly true. “A heart attack at his desk. The funeral’s tomorrow. And Palpatine needs to speak with me in person about the will.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Bant, you’re a magician,” Tahl sighed into the phone.“Where would I be without you?”

“On the phone with the airline yourself,” her assistant supplied helpfully. 

Someday, Tahl knew, Bant would outgrow her current position at Muja, a job that made Bant her simultaneous bodyguard, secretary, cheerleader, and therapist, and would go on to conquer worlds larger than the relentless tides of Tahl’s board meetings and Skype calls and product deadlines.  No one deserved it more, and Tahl would write her the most radiant letter of recommendation the universe had ever beheld when she left…but she couldn’t help but hope that day wouldn’t come, just yet. 

Tahl had enough to handle, just now.

Her eyes drifted to Qui-Gon, an imposing figure before the window, his eyes on the people milling the darkened streets below, his gaze far away.  He’d barely spoken since the call, a few words about the funeral tomorrow and needing to sit down with Palpatine to talk over Dock’s will.  Tahl had taken over immediately.  Bant could book two last-minute flights and hotel rooms in her sleep, and whatever lingering animosities Tahl might hold towards the recently departed and the professional douche canoe who had until recently served as his legal counsel, Qui-Gon was, and always would be, family.  She couldn’t answer emails from a first-class seat back to LAX while he sat through his uncle’s funeral alone. 

“I checked you both in, and I texted you your boarding pass…if you have Mr. Jinn’s contact information, I’d be happy to to do the same for him.”

Only Bant would assign an honorific to the rumpled mess currently occupying Tahl’s hotel room, his battered jacket still abandoned on the floor, a relic of a lovely night that already felt like it had taken place years ago, gone cold and stale around them.  Tahl recited Qui-Gon’s number easily, from long memory, adding, “I really do appreciate this, Bant.  Now stop answering emails and go home.  I’ll call you about rescheduling the rest of tomorrow in the morning.”

“I can do it now,” Bant protested, perpetually eager to carry more responsibility on her slim shoulders.  “It’s no trouble, really—”

Tahl did not know what she had done in her life to deserve Bant Eerin now, but she was endlessly grateful for it.  But that didn’t mean she was going to allow her all-time favorite assistant’s energy and reliability to burn out like a supernova.

“Remember how we decided a reasonable work/life balance was a valuable thing to cultivate?” she suggested gently.

She could picture Bant back at her office at Muja’s headquarters in Coruscant, California, the skeptical tilt of her head, the thick plait of her pale red hair spilling over her shoulder. 

“I remember that Yoda wrote a memo on it once, and you mocked it relentlessly.  For days.  You considered getting framed, for late nights at the office when you needed a laugh.”

“Well, do as I say and not as I do,” Tahl said dryly. 

“You’re the boss,” Bant replied, a teasing note of resignation in her voice.  The phone dimmed, Bant off to yoga, or pilates, or to clock her usual impressive number of laps in Muja’s company pool.  Tahl wondered if it was a sign of advancing age that just the thought of it all made her tired.    

“You don’t have to do this, you know.”

Qui-Gon had turned to face her, a rueful mix of reticence and determination playing over his strong features.  The knot into which he’d absently twisted his long hair after the phone call had already come loose, strands escaping in cinnamon-colored wisps that played with the wrinkled collar of his faded button-down, the room’s overly aggressive air conditioning stirring it around his face.  She was unsure if he was referring to the flight to Boston, the purchase of the tickets, or the arrangement of both, but either way, her answer was the same. 

“Yes, I do,” she said briskly.  “Now get moving.  We still have to stop by your apartment for you to pack, unless you have a suitcase stashed somewhere here I haven’t noticed?”

“I didn’t bring a toothbrush and a change of clothes to dinner, no,” Qui-Gon said dryly. 

There had been a time when it wouldn’t have mattered, when he’d gotten off a plane from Paris without even a tube of toothpaste, because they’d hadn’t been in the same time zone in years, and she had a hotel room with bright yellow sheets and a balcony overlooking the canals.  They’d bought t-shirts and soap together, tried every street food they could get their hands on, laughed till her sides hurt at their faltering Dutch.  On Monday, she’d left before the sun had come up, to make her report to Yoda on her progress with their potential European investors, Qui-Gon still stretched out in the bed.  He’d looked so young, suddenly, the stern lines of his face softened by an exhausted sleep, like the years had fallen away from him, from them both.  _I love you_ , she’d whispered, as she brushed a kiss against his cheek on her way out the door.  She’d never known if he’d heard her, if he’d really been asleep…or if he’d just been pretending to be, saving them both the awkwardness of another painful goodbye. 

Maybe it didn’t matter anymore.

But three days in Amsterdam were a long time ago, another lifetime, almost, and neither of them were kids anymore.  _She_ wasn’t a kid anymore.  She couldn’t afford to be. 

Still, sarcasm was a step in the right direction; when Qui-Gon was truly mired in self-pity, Tahl knew from long experience, he had no sense of humor whatsoever. 

"I know you have places to be," he persisted.  "Meetings, phone calls..."

He trailed off, apparently unable to come up with a single other thing she did with her days.  If asked, she could have named several tasks that made up his: scoping out locales, setting up shots, avoiding any permanent responsibility...

...but now probably wasn't the time for that, either. 

"It's taken care of," she said shortly.  “How fast can you pack?  It’s going to be tight, but if we hurry, we can make it.”

“What about you?”

Tahl was busy pulling up the flight details on her phone, all there, all ready, just as Bant had promised.  She was going to wrangle a raise for Bant out of Muja as soon as she got home, no matter what it took…“What about me, what?”

“You weren’t expecting to make a detour to Boston to attend a funeral,” Qui-Gon explained patiently, abandoning his vigil by the window to stare pointedly at the compact carry-on bag open on her bed. 

 _Boston_ : even the word still made Tahl itch, as though she was suddenly thirteen years old again, back in a heavy plaid skirt and stiff blazer, stuck at the end of the couch at one of her parents’ endless cocktail parties.  Even in the worst Los Angeles smog, she could _breathe_ better three thousand miles away, where her voice was never too loud and her laughter never ill-timed.     

But her feelings weren’t what mattered here.  Her father had gone back to England after her parents’ divorce, her mother flitting between ski slopes and beaches after Tahl had left for college.  The home she’d had there once didn’t exist anymore.  It wasn’t a tragedy; it was growing up.

She knew Qui-Gon hadn’t been back once.

But it wouldn't do for him to wallow. 

She smiled brightly.  “I have a red strapless number I think would be both respectful and _entirely_ appropriate to the occasion.  Do you think that would work, do you think he would have minded?”

Qui-Gon’s lips twitched with a humor he was apparently unwilling to allow himself when discussing funeral arrangements.  He waited.

As far as Tahl was concerned, unexpected deaths and car accidents and troubling diagnoses were exactly when it was most important to remain vigilant against the creep of solemnity and self-pity, to keep her sense of irony razor-sharp.  Low morale, Tahl had always figured, had lost more battles than dysentery. 

She rolled her eyes.  “I have a black suit in my bag that even Dooku couldn’t have found it in himself to wholeheartedly disapprove of.”

“That would have been a first,” Qui-Gon muttered, his eyes sliding away from her again, to a study in a silent house in Beacon Hill, and a lawyer’s office in Nevada, a piece of paper placed between them.

She wouldn’t presume to know what Qui-Gon was feeling.  But there wasn’t even the smallest sliver of her soul that could bring itself to weep for Dooku.

She touched the back of Qui-Gon’s hand, the fine hairs familiar against her fingertips.  “We’ll get through it,” she promised, her voice softer.

He pulled away, as she should have known he would.  She busied herself with making a last check of her things, pretending that she didn’t feel the sting.

“We better get going,” he said, his voice muffled as he bent to recover his jacket.  “We have a long night ahead of us.”

His hand on the door, he hesitated.  “And Tahl?”

She zipped up her bag and lifted it off the bed.  She’d have to thank the engineers at Muja; the new laptop designs really were feather-light…“Yes?”

“I’ll give you twenty bucks to wear the red.”

* * *

Tahl did not wear the red.

With Dooku dead, the gesture would have been wasted, anyway, on the guests at his funeral, an indistinguishable assortment of elderly men and women in nearly identical suits, the ruling class of New England's financial dominion.  They filled the lacquered pews of the small church, a sea of indifferent faces above homogeneous dark wool, their eyes dutifully fixed on the open coffin ahead, their thoughts clearly on afternoon meetings that might have to be pushed and tee times that had been reserved for two weeks and the glass of Scotch they would, tonight especially, so richly deserve. 

From the back of the church, sheltered in the entryway to the sanctuary proper, Tahl felt a certain kinship with them.

She also didn’t particularly want to be here, and she also could have used a drink.

She wouldn’t have put money on the probability of Qui-Gon Jinn’s ownership of a suit, but there he was, appropriately dressed for the occasion, properly knotted tie and all.  He would have been very nearly respectable-looking, if not for his hair, worn loose around his shoulders, an act of rebellion against a now-defunct authority, and his shoes, scuffed and worn, and the mutinous expression carved into his features.

It was possible that one of these wasn’t deliberate. 

They'd barely spoken on the plane.  Qui-Gon had fallen asleep before takeoff, his forehead pressed against the round window, his long legs folded into the small space so that his knees came up nearly to his shoulders.  (She had specifically, but _quietly_ , directed Bant to look for two seats in coach.  Qui-Gon hadn’t brought up the price of the tickets, but if he decided to get huffy about it—and there was really no predicting what Qui-Gon might suddenly decide to care about, she had learned that long ago—she’d rather he be saddled with a ticket he couldn’t really afford, rather than a ticket he _really_ couldn’t afford.)  Tahl, still on west coast time, had powered through her inbox, shooting off a quick missive to Yoda ("Family emergency, delayed in Boston, will handle everything long-distance until return") to Luminara, chief financial officer of Muja ("Terrible timing, I know, please forward all relevant emails") and to Quinlan, head of product design ("Please don't fuck anything up until I get back, or I won't be responsible for Lumi's actions.")  Then had come the hotel, and their separate rooms, where Tahl, her jet lag and deeply trying day suddenly overcoming her defenses, had barely had time to crawl between the sheets before the world went dark.  Then it had been time to get up again, and shower, and attempt to make herself presentable for the funeral, a final showing before a silent judge.

“Once more unto the breach,” she whispered, squeezing Qui-Gon’s hand, swiftly, before letting go.

He snorted, softly.  “I’m glad one of us is still putting our education to good use.”

“I can say it in Latin, too,” Tahl informed him, sighing.  “Latin never comes up as much as they said it would.”

She hadn’t asked Bant for a return flight yet, but it was still possible she could be home tonight: if the funeral wasn’t too long, if the service at the grave was short, if Qui-Gon didn’t need her help with settling Dooku’s estate…

As if he would.  As if Qui-Gon wouldn't vastly prefer to set fire to his uncle’s papers than to sit in a room with her and Palpatine to discuss them…and, knowing Qui-Gon, that course of action wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility. 

He was waiting, arms crossed, impatient to be done with a service that had yet to begin.  “Are you coming?”

The wood of the floor was old, creaking censoriously beneath her heels as they made their way down the aisle.  Like everything else she remembered from this city, its charm apparently rested upon its perception of age.  She slowed as they approached the coffin, letting Qui-Gon move ahead of her, in case he wanted to pay some version of respects to the deceased.  But he didn’t so much as glance at the body, much less approach it, lowering himself instead into the front pew with the enthusiasm of a man settling into the electric chair.  Tahl hesitated, momentarily—surely the first pew was for family, of which she most assuredly was not?—but the only person who would mind was the guest of honor, and if he sat up to take issue with her, they’d all have bigger problems than her slight lapse in etiquette.  Qui-Gon couldn’t sit there alone; it was too pathetic.  She settled in beside him, gesturing, in a moment that reminded her strongly of prep school assemblies, for him to scoot over.  They should have plenty of room, after all.  Dooku had no other relations.

But the pew was not unoccupied. 

A young man was sitting alone, a slight figure in a perfectly tailored black suit.  He did not seem to be keep himself apart from the dozens behind him, any more than they appeared to be deliberately avoiding him; it was as though they existed in separate orbits.  He couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen, younger than most of the crowd behind him by a good half a century.

And Tahl had been telling herself that she and Qui looked too young and cute to be here.

She watched as his head turned to take them in, his light eyebrows lifting in a gesture of restrained disapproval, and then he slid further down the polished wood, his eyes resolutely ahead, as though the occupant of the coffin might resent any lapse in attention. 

Which, knowing Dooku, he might.

Qui-Gon shrugged; apparently he didn’t have any more of an idea of what was going on here than she did, which was, after all, the usual state of affairs. 

Then the organ started up, the congregated bankers and lawyers and representatives falling into an unhappy silence.  Tahl sighed inwardly and hoped that Dooku’s infamous disdain for all sentimentality would at least make the service _short_.  Qui-Gon shifted his weight, his large frame sending an inelegant creak through the wood beneath them.  The boy beside them glanced over again, gracing them with a distinctly withering look before returning his attention to the priest, now front and center and ready to begin. 

Qui-Gon, his dark blue eyes narrowing, leaned back in his seat, the groan of the pew louder this time. 

Tahl Uvain, a thirty-seven year old adult and senior vice president of Muja, Inc., a Fortune 500 company, did not giggle, and certainly not here and now, in the presence of God and man.  She folded her hands neatly in her lap and pressed her lips together, and tried to listen as the priest prayed for mercy for Dooku’s soul, a very doubtful proposition, as far as she was concerned. 

It used to be the back of the cavernous gathering hall at Exeter (not the very last row; that was for amateurs), two seats towards the middle, an embossed and monogrammed water bottle containing sharp-scented clear liquid passed hand over hand, fingers finding each other for a dozen clandestine thumb wrestles.  Qui-Gon always won; Tahl always insisted the next round would be hers.

They used to complain so bitterly about those assemblies, about the time wasted, about yet another speaker rambling on about duty and responsibility and the future, not a word of which Tahl remembered, and yet… 

She realized the church had gone quiet.

The boy on the other side of the pew got his feet, the high ceilings above him seeming to make him very alone as he made his way up slowly to stand behind the podium, the folded piece of paper held tightly in his hand the only clue to his nerves. 

He cleared his throat.  “I’d like to say a few words about my father.”

_Father?_

But Dooku had no other family.  That was how Qui-Gon had come to live with his uncle in the first place; there was simply no one left.

She sneaked a glance to her right.  Qui-Gon had gone completely still, as though he were carved from stone, silent and untouchable beside her. 

Tahl’s fingers itched for her phone, nestled inside her bag.  Surely a little discreet Googling would turn up something here…

She laced her fingers together.  If she pulled out her phone in the middle of his funeral, Dooku would probably rise from the dead and drag her back to hell with him, and then she’d never find out. 

“My father was…a very precise man.”  This stranger’s voice was quiet but clear, carrying easily across the small church.  “He knew what he liked, and how he liked things done.  He never ordered a meal he didn’t enjoy.  He never chose the wrong wine.  He was always perfectly dressed for the occasion.”

He paused, the bristly spikes of his close-cropped ginger hair dipping as he glanced down at the open coffin, and its blue suited occupant.    

“My father believed in planning for all possibilities.  ‘If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles,’ he always used to say.  He said it wasn’t enough to be a step ahead of everyone else in the room.  He needed to be three steps ahead.  Surprise, he always told me, was just a sentimental word for lack of preparation.”

Tahl could practically feel Qui-Gon’s jaw tightening.

“But he didn't leave any instructions for his funeral.  Not a file on his computer.  Not a letter with his lawyer.  Not a word.  Not the coffin he wanted as his final resting place, not the music he wanted played as he was put in the ground, not even where he wanted to be buried.  He kept up insurance on a car he never drove, and a vacation home he never visited, but he never even bought a plot.  So…I guess my father was something of an optimist, after all.”

With that, he folded his paper back up into the pocket of his suit, smiled politely, and walked away.

A discomfited whisper rustled through the crowd, and Tahl burned to know exactly what it meant.  Had they all known Dooku had a son?  Was he a known quantity to those assembled here?  Or would they all go home, to wives and husbands, girlfriends and boyfriends, pour themselves a drink, and say, _I went to Dooku’s funeral today, and some strange kid gave the eulogy?_ Or did they all know him well, intimately enough to be startled at what he’d said?  Would it be, _I went to Dooku’s funeral today, and Dooku Jr is losing his shit?_

The boy in question settled back down on the far end of the front pew, his legs stretched out in front of him, looking considerably more relaxed than when he’d stood up. 

Tahl was tempted to applaud, but settled for a raised eyebrow at Qui-Gon.  He didn’t respond. 

But shouldn’t there be someone with this child?  She’d never known Dooku to have any kind of romantic partner—and _there_ was a thoroughly unpleasant series of mental images, a house of cards she feared could not be stood back up—although she remembered, back in the day, gleefully making numerous references to the probability of a mistress, despite an abundance of negative evidence.  Even the unlikelihood of a sordid entanglement seemed like a friendlier version of events than the alternative, in which Dooku’s absence and preoccupation were nothing more than absence and preoccupation. 

She waited out the rest of the service impatiently.  The rites concluded at last, Dooku's soul commended to the grace of a forgiving God, his mortal form dabbed with incense and holy water, a feat Tahl would not have wanted to be the one to attempt, at least not without a freshly sharpened stake. 

Then came the announcement about the graveside service, a prospect that was not encouraging to Tahl or her thin coat, bought for California winters, nor for her odds of making a flight home tonight.  The crowd dispersed, to join them at the cemetery or to make a break for it, she wasn’t sure. 

"Let's get this over with," she muttered to Qui-Gon, but he wasn't listening. 

Qui-Gon, a determined expression on his face that Tahl recognized from a hundred bad ideas past, was approaching the young man at the end of the pew.

“I’m Qui-Gon Jinn,” he said, offering his hand, his mellifluous voice oddly hollow in the nearly empty church.  “I was Dooku’s nephew.”

The young man got to his feet, narrowing, but nowhere near closing, the gap in their comparative heights.  He looked at Qui-Gon’s hand as though there were snakes crawling between his fingers, before reluctantly reaching out his own.  “Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

The two stared at each other for a long moment, the seconds stretching on in a way that called to mind white cowboy hats and fast-draw disputes over towns that weren’t big enough for the two of them.  Tahl was tempted to ask if they wanted to settle this at Miss Kitty’s.

She went with another tack.  “Do you need a ride to the cemetery, Obi-Wan?  Qui-Gon and I were just about to call a cab…”

“There you are!”

Tahl hadn’t seen that slippery bastard in years, but it wasn’t a voice she was likely to forget.

“Palpatine,” Qui-Gon said coolly, drawing himself up to a height that easily dwarfed the attorney before him, but didn’t in any way lessen the quiet threat of his presence. 

Sheev Palpatine had aged in the years since that afternoon in the stifling office just outside of Las Vegas.  There were new lines in his smooth skin, creases around his dark eyes that on anyone else might have been called laugh lines.  But Tahl had to search for these cues, remind herself of them consciously; otherwise she might have been eighteen years old again, the heat sending cold shivers down her skin, staring across a long table at a man with the same bright, cold smile.

His eyebrows lifted indulgently at Qui-Gon’s tone as he draped a paternal, territorial arm around Obi-Wan’s shoulders. 

“What a pleasure to see you, Qui-Gon.  And Ms. Uvain!” he continued, turning his nauseating smile on her.  “What an extraordinary surprise.  I can’t say I expected to see you…well, ever again.”

Qui-Gon’s glare could have sliced through a can of Coke, like those knives from the infomercials Tahl used to watch in college, lying awake late into the night.

“Thank you,” Obi-Wan answered politely, breaking the silence, thick with buried resentments and unvoiced accusations.  “But I have a ride.”

With an apologetic smile back at Tahl, and a far less friendly glance at Qui-Gon, he disappeared after a smiling Palpatine, leaving the two of them standing there alone, the silence no less awkward, the moment no less painful. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tahl's last name is borrowed from Ruth Baulding's brilliant perfect Lineage series, because we all agree that's just her name now, right?


	3. Chapter 3

New York winters were cold, but Boston winds were _biting_.

The air howled around them, whistling through the field of weathered grave stones, tearing through the black limbs of bare trees, months ago stripped of their leaves, bending them back upon themselves like the outstretched hands of supplicants. Steel gray clouds hovered above, pressing down upon the small crowd stood around the open grave, heavy with a rain that would fall soon, Qui-Gon was sure of it. He still remembered, so many years later, how quickly rain could fall in New England, how hard it could soak, how fast a storm could move in.

His fingers itched for his camera, left behind at the hotel, a reflexive need to capture and preserve an experience now, and understand it later. He dug his fingernails into his cold palms. It was just as well he wasn’t prepared to photograph this.

He did not want to take any part of this moment home with him.

The cemetery was quiet today, empty, at least the portion of it within sight. Neatly manicured grass stretched in every direction, yellow and brittle from the cold, perfectly spaced headstones surrounding on all sides. Qui-Gon had never given much thought to where he would want to be laid to rest, but it wouldn’t be here. The graves were too far apart, their occupants seemingly holding each other at a polite distance, even in death. It seemed…lonely. He could see no other living beings, no other mourners, no loved ones come to lay flowers on graves.

Would anyone take care of Dooku’s? Would someone ( _Obi-Wan_ , a voice in his head whispered) visit on Sundays, plant something new every spring? Or would the grass above his coffin lay empty, trimmed only occasionally by an indifferent attendant, to whom each grave was as alike as the next?

But then, Qui-Gon didn’t know what had become of his parents’ graves, either. Until this moment, it had not occurred to him to wonder.

Dooku would know. _Would_ have known.

It was too late now to ask.

He wrenched his attention back to the service.

Dooku’s coffin had been placed above the grave, closed, now, ready for its eternal interment in the soil, freshly tilled in anticipation. The white flowers draping the casket felt unsettling, wrong; orchids and carnations were too soft for the man beneath them, for the tightness in Qui-Gon’s chest. He wanted to feel something concrete, something simple: closure; sadness; regret, even. But all he felt was a dull desire to be gone from this place.

He hadn’t spoken to his uncle in fifteen years. His absence, now made permanent, left no hole.

“May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace,” Father Dyas intoned, in a rite Qui-Gon remembered, with an unpleasant quaver of recognition, from his parents’ funerals, the two coffins side by side, the priest’s words so hollow and inadequate.

The few gathered around the coffin, far fewer than in the church, murmured an indistinct amen.

Tahl stood close by him, out of support or simply for warmth, he didn’t know. Her arms were crossed, her fingertips hidden inside her sleeves, but she wasn’t shivering; purely out of stubbornness, Qui-Gon was well aware. Only Tahl could hold back hypothermia with a supreme act of will. Quietly, keeping his gaze on the coffin, he shrugged out of his old coat and draped it around her more slight frame. Her lips twitched, and her glare held only a reluctant gratitude as she wrapped the material more tightly around her shoulders. With Tahl, that alone could be considered a minor victory.

Qui-Gon’s gaze stole across the coffin to where Obi-Wan stood, Palpatine close by his side. Obi-Wan was shivering a little; from grief, or simple chill, Qui-Gon didn’t know. Palpatine looked perfectly comfortable, but then he did everywhere. His face was sculpted into solemn lines, and the black wool coat covering his black suit was utterly respectful…and yet, somehow, there was nothing about his bearing that suggested even a hint of sorrow. He laid a black-gloved hand on Obi-Wan’s shoulder. Qui-Gon could not tell if Obi-Wan found it comforting, or if he was simply tolerating the gesture. His skin itched just imagining it. But maybe he would have felt differently, if this had been his father’s funeral.

And there was another thread of his tangled feelings that Qui-Gon couldn’t begin to unravel.

Dooku could not possibly have a son. It just…wasn’t possible. Qui-Gon would have known. ( _But you haven’t spoken in almost two decades_ , whispered that same voice of reason, which sounded suspiciously similar to Tahl’s. _Anything could have happened to him_.)

Apparently, anything had.

Palpatine tilted his head at the words of the service, as though he couldn’t listen without making it clear to everyone else that he was paying attention.

Qui-Gon’s feelings about the man in question were…less complex.

For a moment, back in the church, when he’d spoken like that to Tahl, Qui-Gon had thought he might hit him.

He clenched his jaw, mentally counting to three. He was not going to get into a brawl at a funeral. He was not.

“You’re going to give yourself dental problems,” Tahl whispered, leaning closer.

“Thank you for the advice,” he muttered back, keeping his eyes obediently on the priest. “I forgot about all those valuable years you spent in dental school.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t come whining to me when you’re forty years old with a mouthguard.”

He raised his fist to his lips, turning his snort into an abrupt cough.

Tahl’s green eyes were triumphant.

He never won, not with her. He should have learned that long ago.

Across the hole in the ground, a pair of pale blue eyes were watching him. Back in the church, they’d been stern, resentful, almost; now they were softer…wistful?

Maybe Qui-Gon was the estranged relative here, the ungrateful nephew, the one who didn’t belong, who never had. But he would not traded places, to be the favored son, standing there alone, with only Sheev Palpatine to comfort him.

The wind whistled louder now, over the sudden quiet.

He pulled his focus back to the service. Father Dyas was turning away, shrugging a puffy coat over his vestments. He realized, abruptly, that he’d missed it, the final moment, the last benediction. The funeral was over, the priest out of words, the mourners dispersing, the coffin soon to be lowered into the ground.

If he’d been looking for closure, he would not find it here, not today.

He stared at the coffin, trying to imagine the man inside, or what was left of him: the pale skin, the aristocratic nose, the stern mouth. He tried to conjure his uncle’s voice, the disdain coloring the cultured tone.

Strangers streamed by, as eager to be gone as he had been, just a moment ago.

There was nothing here for him. He didn’t know what he was waiting for, what ties could possibly still be holding him here.

Tahl rested her hand on his arm, her warm umber fingers grounding him, bringing him back. “Qui?” Her voice was soft. “Take your time.”

It overcame him, suddenly, sometimes, without warning: the way it could have been, and the way it was, and the roaring oceans spanning between the two.

He wanted to bury his face in her chest, and he wanted to never lay eyes on her again.

She must have seen something distant in his gaze, something painful in the set of his jaw; she withdrew her hand, and stepped back, leaving him alone.

As always, they left each other aching.

He stepped forwards, crossing the grass slowly, the remains of the morning’s frost crunching beneath his feet.

He ignored the coffin, and the two men heaping it unceremoniously with dirt, and Palpatine, still standing guard, his smile beginning to strain at the edges.

This wasn’t what Tahl had meant, but it was a good idea. He thought she’d agree.

He approached the boy who’d given the eulogy, voice never wavering; who might be his cousin; who’d had to watch his father put in the ground without anyone who made him smile. Qui-Gon was going home after this, after all, back to New York and his work and his life. After tomorrow, and his meeting with Palpatine, this would all be behind him again, part of the past that had no hold on him, not anymore. This was someone else’s life now, not his. He could afford to be generous.

“Obi-Wan? Would you like to join us for dinner?”

* * *

The diner was warm, and bright, a welcome respite from the storm Qui-Gon had predicted. As cold as it had felt back at the cemetery, it was too warm for a freeze, and so it was rain and not sleet that pounded against the darkened windows and poured off doorways, slicking roads that could become suddenly dangerous with just the drop of a degree or two. But Dex’s was dry, crowded with diners seeking refuge from the vagaries of New England winters, or at least a decent cheeseburger, buzzing with a cheerful energy that felt healing, a panacea to the stale quiet of the cemetery. In the booth behind him, two teenagers were hesitantly sharing a milkshake, fingers brushing awkwardly as they reached for straws; across the way, a mother was feeding a toddler bites of her fries, while recounting her day to a friend on the phone with good-humored exasperation. There was a jukebox in the corner, but Qui-Gon guessed that it was purely ornamental, an offering to Dex’s distant past. The music piped in through discreet speakers wasn’t out of date, but it might have been, a soothing smoothness to the chosen melodies promising that everything would be all right now, or at least better, with a piece of pie.

He twisted his damp hair out of the way with the fraying black hair band on his wrist and flipped open a faded menu, the laminated shell cracking at the corners. Dex’s offered the usual fare: burgers, subs, various foodstuffs fried beyond recognition. In this moment, Qui-Gon wanted all of it, every deep-fried molecule, to drown out the scent of those lilies with the vibrance of grease and salt and tangy homemade ketchup.

“Start with onion rings?” he suggested.

From across the booth, Obi-Wan shrugged, more out of an attempt at good manners, Qui-Gon guessed, than indifference to the subject matter.

“Tahl?”

“Potato skins are better,” she decided, smothering a yawn with delicate fingers. “And coffee.”

Sometimes Qui-Gon thought he’d spent the better part of the last ten years some degree of jet lagged, a part of his brain formed into a compass perpetually unable to pick out true north.

“Caffeine will just make it worse,” he advised.

The withering look Tahl aimed across the table made Obi-Wan snort out loud. He flushed, repentant; humor, as Qui-Gon recalled, never having been one of the virtues prized by his late uncle.

Tahl smiled. “I couldn’t have put it better myself,” she assured him. “Potato skins, Obi-Wan?”

Obi-Wan smiled back, the hollow look in his eyes temporarily lightening. “Potato skins sound good to me.”

Outside, the storm continued unabated, the rain slanting against the windows and rolling off the panes in thick sheets; inside, the diner was a separate world, untouched by the elements. It reminded Qui-Gon of childhood games of parachute, his elementary school class on the floor of the gym, holding the thick multicolored fabric above their heads, cocooned from the outside world by swirling colors. He wished he had his camera…

“Jet lag from where?” Obi-Wan was asking Tahl, when he was brought back to awareness by the arrival of Tahl’s potato skins.

“Coruscant, California,” she answered, waving a still-steaming fry gently through the air to cool it. “It’s about forty minutes outside of LA. That’s where I live. But I had a meeting in New York yesterday, so I was already practically in town. And Qui-Gon, you’d been out of the country for…five months?”

“Four and a half,” he said, surprised that Tahl knew that much about his whereabouts. She hadn’t gotten that information from him, he was almost positive. But he’d given up long ago on trying to figure out how Tahl knew things. “I flew home…” He paused, his tired brain trying to work through the maze of timezones. “Two nights ago.”

It was hard to tell from his mild expression if Obi-Wan was impressed by this, or just maintaining a polite interest. “And then you had to fly across the country?”

Qui-Gon ran his finger down the worn plastic of the menu. “I live in New York,” he explained absently, trying to decide between the full-on assault of a bacon double cheeseburger or the gentler tuna melt. “It wasn't a long flight.”

A line appeared between Obi-Wan’s pale eyebrows, but he didn’t ask any further questions.

Qui-Gon, however, had several of his own, and they weren’t going to ask themselves.

Conversation was interrupted briefly by the return of their waitress. Qui-Gon gave in to his demons and ordered a cheeseburger, as did Obi-Wan; Tahl asked for a cheese omelette and toast.

“If you don’t mind my asking, Obi-Wan—”

Tahl shot him a warning look above her own menu, which he ignored.

“—I wasn’t aware until today that Dooku had any other family.”

Obi-Wan finished chewing before he answered. He could not have been more clearly the product of Dooku’s parenting if his pedigree had been tattooed onto his forehead.

“I’m adopted,” he said, in a mild tone that sounded, to Qui-Gon’s ear, both deliberate and well-practiced. “Dad found me in a foster home when I was five.”

But that…was impossible. Dooku had never wanted children, not his own and certainly not anyone else’s. Dooku had been endlessly sorry to have been saddled with Qui-Gon, then a teenager, and well beyond the nap times-and-picture-books stage. Dooku loathed noise and mess and unpredictability, all of which came with parenting in spades. What could possibly have made him want to adopt?

“This must be very difficult for you,” Tahl said, filling Qui-Gon’s sudden silence. “Losing a parent again, I mean.”

Obi-Wan shrugged eloquently, picking at a potato skin. “I’ve been in foster care before. It’s not so bad.”

Qui-Gon swallowed, his piece of potato suddenly hard and painful in his throat. He would have spent his teens in foster care, too, if not for Dooku.

He’d told himself, so many times over the years, that it was the very least that Dooku could have done, and maybe he’d been right. Maybe the nominal sheltering of her son was enough to satisfy Dooku’s sense of duty towards his sister Breha, dead in a car crash decades before her time. Maybe he’d resented the responsibility; maybe he’d resented Qui-Gon himself. Maybe he’d done what he did in Nevada out of malice, pure and simple.

But Qui-Gon had spent three years not in a state institution, but in one of the finest boarding schools on the eastern seaboard, and maybe there wasn’t nothing to that, after all.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he managed, the words gruff and inadequate, even to his own ear.

He knew, twice over, what it was like to be suddenly cast adrift, absent the moorings that used to keep you tied to a place, to a family, to the rest of humanity. He knew what it was like to realize how swiftly the ground could crumble beneath you, how easy it was to fall.

He did not know how to comfort Obi-Wan when he’d never known how to comfort himself.

From the lift of Tahl’s eyebrows, the rest of the table could tell he’d missed the mark, too.

But it was always easy for her: the appropriate words, the right look, the perfect gesture that made those in her presence feel seen, noticed, understood, even if she could barely remember their names. There was a reason she had business cards and an assistant and stock options, and he had a camera. It had always been easier for him to express himself in a darkroom than out loud.

A picture of this moment would have captured the resignation shaping Obi-Wan’s young face, the unyielding boundaries of the table separating them, the darkness outside threatening the light and warmth of the diner, the shadows under Obi-Wan’s eyes.

Not that that would have helped him, either.

Tahl leveled her gaze at him, her moss green eyes filled with something close enough to disappointment to make him shift, just a little, on the cracked red vinyl of the booth. “We’re going to need more potato skins,” she informed him.

Someday, Qui-Gon told himself, as he heaved his tired limbs out of the booth and towards the waitress behind the counter, he was going to convince himself that he didn’t have to do what Tahl told him to.

He waited for his order to be ready, trying not to think of anything at all.

When he got back to the table, bounty in hand, Obi-Wan was digging into his burger, delivered in Qui-Gon’s absence, talking animatedly to Tahl about something Qui-Gon couldn’t quite catch. He looked much more cheerful than when Qui-Gon had left, which should have made him feel better but only made him, shamefully, feel worse. Tahl flashed him a smile as he slid into the booth.

“Obi-Wan was just telling me he’s a freshman at Boston Latin,” she said. “He skipped eighth grade. Didn’t we know some people who went there, Qui?”

He shrugged.

“We went to Exeter,” Tahl continued, Qui-Gon’s participation apparently unnecessary to her narrative. “But that was a long time ago. I don’t know anything about what the school system’s like now.”

“I thought about Exeter,” Obi-Wan replied. “They have a really challenging program there, particularly in liberal arts. But Dad…” He swallowed. “Dad didn’t want me going away. He said boarding schools are a mistake.”

A fireworks display was happening inside Qui-Gon’s head, bright lights exploding into firecrackers behind his skull. His eyes met Tahl’s, and he was suddenly once again grateful that she was there, so that someone could bear witness to what it looked like when he burst into flames.

Dooku hadn’t even liked it when he’d come back to Boston for vacations. Every year, there was a reason why he had to spend spring break or Thanksgiving on campus, why it just “didn’t work out” for Qui-Gon to spend an extra week in his uncle’s house.

“Did he,” Qui-Gon said belatedly, grating out the words as though he was being charged for the utterance by the syllable. “How interesting.”

“Given the amount of trouble we managed to get into, he was probably right,” Tahl said smoothly, a rescue for which Qui-Gon was simultaneously thankful and resentful, a not unfamiliar sensation where Tahl was concerned.

"I prefer to think of it as an assortment of interesting experiences," Qui-Gon managed, some of the muscles in his jaw easing.

“Yes, I think of that experience that ended with us in the back of a squad car as particularly edifying,” Tahl put in.

“We learned that possession of a ziplock bag of oregano is embarrassing, but not a federal offense,” Qui-Gon replied. “It’s come in handy as least as much all those Latin declensions.”

Obi-Wan reached for the last potato skin; somehow, they had all disappeared again. Qui-Gon would have to get more. The least he could do was send the kid home with leftovers.

“Have you been together since high school, then?”

Qui-Gon coughed, a piece of burger suddenly stuck in his throat. He was, apparently, getting too old for diner fare.

For the first time in recent memory, Tahl didn’t have a quip at the ready, either. She took a long sip of her ice water, her eyes avoiding his.

“No,” Qui-Gon managed in Obi-Wan’s direction. “We haven’t.”

Tahl located her powers of speech. “I just came for the funeral,” she said, in what Qui-Gon still thought of as her grown-up voice. “Qui-Gon and I are just friends.”

Obi-Wan’s brow furrowed. “I thought—”

“An easy mistake to make,” Tahl assured him, and the word burned through Qui-Gon like a gasoline fire.

She’d said _mistake_ back then, too.

“Do you have anyone staying with you, Obi-Wan?” she asked, skillfully steering the conversation back to less dangerous waters.

Obi-Wan replied; in the negative, Qui-Gon believed. But he was so tired, suddenly, the weight of fourteen weeks of traveling, the funeral, an unexpected relative, and two taxing dinners so heavy on his shoulders he could barely keep his head up. If it wouldn’t have been unforgivably rude (if Tahl would have ever let him forget it) he could have fallen asleep right there in the booth, his head pillowed on the table’s smooth veneer.

Tahl, who could have kept up a conversation in her sleep (and if memory served, on occasion had) led Obi-Wan through a variety of safer subjects. Qui-Gon confined himself to nods and periodic grunts.

The rest of dinner did not take long.

They were silent as they dropped Obi-Wan off at his empty home; to pack, to wait, to sleep, Qui-Gon didn’t know. They were silent, side by side, a slight but meaningful gap between them, in the back of the cab on their way to the hotel, each of them staring out into the blackness of the night, the rain still rolling off their separate windows.

They were silent as they rode the elevator up to their floor.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Tahl said at the fork in the hallway, her room to the left, his to the right.

The pale yellow bulbs overhead blinked queasily down on the scuffed and faded blue carpet, bending the light in a way that made him think of aquariums, of being trapped beneath the surface, of a permanent absence of sunlight.

Qui-Gon nodded. The less said now, the better.

He ran his keycard through the door lock; it stayed bolted, the indicator light flashing red. He tried again. Red. A third time. Red.

“Will you be going home tomorrow?” he called out, to Tahl’s retreating form.

She paused, taking a few steps closer to his room, watching his battle with the door. She took the keycard out of his hands and swiped it smoothly through the lock; it clicked open instantly. “If you don’t need me for anything.”

It was late, and he was tired. He needed sleep. Sleep, and a few hours’ peace, and this moment, this night, would look different to him, less sinister, more amusing. He knew that.

He took his key out of her hand. “I don’t need you to insert yourself in another situation you don’t intend to see through, no,” he said anyway, and shut the door firmly behind him.

* * *

He did not sleep well.

He woke well before dawn, lying awake in a tangle of sheets, watching the pale morning light filter through the curtains.

He’d regretted it, as he’d known he would, as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

It did no good to dwell on the ways in which they had disappointed each other.

Finally, when he could put it off no longer, he showered, and dressed, and headed out the door. To his relief, and his shame, he did not see Tahl in the hallway, or the lobby, or the quiet, still-damp street outside as he awaited his ride. He had not checked her room to see if she was gone, or merely absent.

He had never been to the current location of the Law Offices of Sheev Palpatine, Esq., as the small, pretentiously hand-lettered sign proclaimed it, but he thought he could have recognized it anywhere, picked it out of a lineup: the little pink house, self-deprecating in its size, whimsical in its paint color, intimidatingly grand in its city center address; the original architecture, compulsively restored; the old money, soaking every refinished wooden plank. This house was Old Boston, Old New England. Nobody could have stepped across the smooth, gleaming heartwood floors, past the dark, polished staircase, every banister buffed and shining, to the waiting room, a converted parlor redolent of whiskey and snuff and revolution, and not known what the house was endeavoring, from its cobblestone path to its chandeliers, to convey: you were an intruder here, and you were trespassing on sacred ground.

But Qui-Gon was used to not belonging. This house didn’t bother him in the slightest.

He waited, perching on a delicate chair, until an assistant named Mr. Amedda came to usher him into Palpatine’s inner sanctuary. Palpatine was seated behind a massive oak desk, in a high-backed seat that Qui-Gon would have bet good money, if he’d had it, had cost more than he could earn with a dozen pictures.

“Qui-Gon,” Palpatine sad warmly, rising to greet him. “Thank you for coming to meet with me, and on such short notice. I know how your work keeps you on the move.”

He peered around Qui-Gon; for effect, Qui-Gon knew, as he had heard Mr. Amedda shut the door behind him. “Is Ms. Uvain with you, or will we have the pleasure of her company to look forward to?”

Qui-Gon dropped into the seat on the other side of the desk. He’d called her that in Nevada, too, his courtly manners oozing disdain, as though his politeness lessened her worth by contrast. As though the eighteen-year-old girl at Qui-Gon’s side, her hand still in his then, was some kind of plot to ensnare him, some sophisticated ploy to get her hands on the ten dollars in his wallet and utterly doubtful prospects. As though the two of them were being offered a choice, and not an ultimatum. As though it hadn’t been too late from the moment they’d walked into the office, from the moment Dooku had tracked them down.

Qui-Gon gripped his hands together. What was past was past. He just had to get through this meeting, moment by moment, and it would be in the past, too.

“Just me,” he grated out. “Let’s get this over with.”

Palpatine smiled, as though indulging a spoiled toddler with a demanded cookie. He reached into a drawer and pulled out a file, smoothing a soft, pale hand across its embossed cover. “Would you like to begin with the assets, or the bequests?”

“At the beginning,” Qui-Gon grunted.

Palpatine’s smile widened. “Of course. Now, much as I dread to be the bearer of bad news,” he continued, in a cheerful tone that less conveyed dread than outright glee, “you are, and have not been for several years, the chief beneficiary of your uncle’s estate. However—”

“That’s fine with me,” Qui-Gon interrupted.

“However,” Palpatine went on, his smile unwavering, “it would be inaccurate to say you were not included. Would you like to read the letter your uncle left?”

Silently, Qui-Gon held out his hand.

Palpatine released the thick sheet of parchment into Qui-Gon’s impatient grip reluctantly, as though he had been hoping for the pleasure of reading it aloud.

_To Whom It May Concern,_

_I, Tyranus Dooku, being of sound mind and body, do hereby transcribe this, my last will and testament. My final wishes are simple, and as follows. I bequeath all my assets, properties, and worldly goods to my son, Obi-Wan, to do with as he wishes, so long as he is above the age of twenty-five at the time this will is enacted. In the unlikely event that my death occurs before Obi-Wan reaches this age, then all assets will be held in trust for him by my lawyer, Sheev Palpatine, by whom this document will be held. A trust will be put into place to pay for Obi-Wan’s living expenses and to provide for tuition at the university of his choice, along with a small allowance, to be overseen by the above mentioned. All deductions from this account must be cleared with Palpatine before any money will be dispensed, for any reason, without exception._

_Should my death occur before my son reaches the age of majority, the above remains true. As Obi-Wan’s biological parents long ago forfeited their parental rights, and I have no other living relatives but my nephew, Qui-Gon Jinn, it is with deep regret that I must admit that Obi-Wan will once again become a ward of the state. Qui-Gon has neither the means nor the aptitude to raise a child, and would in all likelihood refuse the responsibility, as is his lifetime habit. If I am dead, then this will be his choice, of course: to become my son’s guardian or to relinquish him to the state. But I cannot say this is an outcome for which I am hoping. Obi-Wan, though it pains me to admit it, will, I am sure, grow from the experience of hardship, whereas his character would only suffer under the doubtful guidance of my nephew. When my son reaches the age of eighteen, he will have the means to attend any school to which he can gain attendance and of which Palpatine can give his approval. (A list of approved choices will be enclosed with this document.) Upon his twenty-fifth birthday, the full measure of my assets will be his, without reservation or condition. I have no doubt he will make sensible use of the means at his disposal, with the steady guidance of my longtime legal counsel._

_Tyranus Dooku_

Qui-Gon read it, twice, just to make sure that he had not misinterpreted or misjudged the contents. He read it a third time.

He had not.

It was the same tone Dooku had used when he’d called their hotel room in Vegas, to inform Qui-Gon that unless he allowed Palpatine to immediately initiate divorce proceedings, his financial support—and his tuition check to NYU—would immediately, and irrevocably, be revoked.

Palpatine was positively beaming. “So you see, it’s quite simple. I only require your signature to give up any claim to Obi-Wan’s care, and you can be on your way. I believe there is a flight to New York leaving from Logan in ninety minutes; it’s just possible you can still make it.”

It was the same triumphant smirk that had escaped his lips in that borrowed office in Nevada when Tahl had said that maybe they’d made a mistake.

It was the same cheerful efficiency that had accompanied the moment when beneath the table, she had let go of his hand.

“That won’t be necessary,” Qui-Gon said, squaring his shoulders to allow himself his full height. “I won’t be signing anything today, and I won’t be making any flights.”

Palpatine’s smile was conciliatory. He didn’t understand yet, and it filled Qui-Gon with a fierce joy, the beat of a warrior tattoo thrumming in his blood.

He wouldn't win, not this time.

“I know this is a difficult time,” Palpatine soothed. “But finalizing these last few details is the best course of action for everyone concerned. I’m sure Obi-Wan would agree.”

Qui-Gon’s smile was unexpectedly sharp, like a February breeze or the flickering tongue of a viper. “You don’t understand,” he said. “I will be taking guardianship of Obi-Wan, effective immediately.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Quinlan, 4:35 a.m:**

so hear me out

 

phones with scent sensors

 

like

 

your phone could tell you when your ex is someplace

 

by their perfume, right?

 

am i wrong

 

or am i a fucking rockstar

 

 

**Quinlan, 4:40 a.m:**

i mean think what this could have saved me with Asajj

 

THINK WHAT THIS COULD SAVE US ALL

 

 

**Quinlan, 5:17 a.m:**

upd8 i went to the 24hr cvs and bought out the cologne section

 

FOR SCIENCE

 

but when it got home, it all just smelled kinda weedy?

 

baffling

 

 

**Quinlan, 5: 46 a.m:**

i’m circumnavigating the problem, i’m ordering online

 

i’ll get reimbursed for the cost of having it dropped on my doorstep by drone

 

 

**Quinlan, 5: 48 a.m:**

right?

 

 

**Quinlan, 6: 15 a.m:**

i mean

 

it is a business expense

 

 

**Quinlan, 6:27 a.m:**

but i should clear this with Luminara first

 

right

 

isn’t that what you're always telling me?

 

 

**Quinlan, 6:33 a.m:**

i’m gonna clear this with Luminara first

 

 

**Luminara, 7:01 a.m:**

I woke up this morning to seven, repeat, SEVEN, messages from Mr. Vos, three of which seem to indicate his belief that I owe him money.  I know you are in the midst of a family emergency of sorts, but two questions

 

1\.  Is he joking, please tell me he is joking

 

2\.  Why does he have my phone number?

 

 

**Luminara, 7:18 a.m.:**

You promised when you hired Mr. Vos that YOU, repeat YOU, would be the handler of his fragile genius and the recipient of his communiqués?  That he would, quote, “not be my problem”?  Is this no longer the case?  Can I fire him now?

 

 

**Bant, 8: 45 a.m:**

I was unsuccessful in conveying to Quin the nature of a chain of command OR what qualifies as a business expense BUT I succeeded in blocking him on Lumi’s phone.  Problem solved!

 

 

**Bant, 8:58 a.m:**

Slight hitch: he unblocked himself.  He really is a genius.  Too bad he’s about to be bludgeoned to death with his expense report.

 

 

**Bant, 9:33 a.m:**

Yoda’s asked me three times this morning if you’re coming back today.  What should I tell him?

 

 

**Bant, 9:46 a.m:**

He’s wandering around the office muttering to himself, but that could be unrelated

 

 

**Bant, 9:52 a.m:**

I don’t want to alarm you, but he’s threatening to send out a press release himself.  YOU REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED LAST TIME.

 

 

It was a troubling commentary on this particular moment in her life, Tahl reflected, staring wearily through the crowded line ahead of her to the ticket counter of Boston Logan International Airport, suddenly her personal Holy Grail, that not only was she desperately trying to get back to this sorry crew as soon as possible, but she was also looking forward to it with a truly depressing fervor.

The east coast had not been kind to her.

She tuned out the dull roar of the people crowded around her—the man struggling to entertain his two-year-old daughter with a complex narrative involving Legos, the young man with the bloodshot eyes clutching his bag protectively every time a security guard passed by, the girlfriend drama of somebody’s brother being lovingly eyerolled by the two women behind the counter—and tightened her grip on her phone, scrolling once more through the morning’s messages, as though she could wish herself back home through an act of sympathetic magic, texts and emails and invoices calling her spirit back to the curving glass-clad offices where it so clearly belonged.

The Boston cold was creeping into her bones, the salt-lined streets and robin’s egg-colored colonials and flat vowels chilling her deep inside.  She wanted the sun.  She missed her car.  Just one good drive down the 101, the top down, the woodgrain steering wheel of her 1966 sapphire blue Mustang smooth as butter against her palms, M.I.A. blasting from her speakers, the eucalyptus-scented breeze in her hair, breathing life back into her body, gray sludge and funeral incense only a distant memory…

She’d thought, briefly, as she stared out the window during the ride from the hotel, of asking the cab driver to go past her old house, the tasteful cream-painted townhouse where she’d grown up, the last place her family had been a family.  She’d let the impulse float away, the unsaid direction to the cab driver shriveling to ash in her mouth.  They were gone.  That time was gone.  What would she have been hoping for?  Her older brother’s thick science textbooks and handwritten notes, still spread out on the floor of an upstairs bedroom?  The lingering scent of her mother’s beloved Benson & Hedges?  Her father murmuring on the phone in the den, swiftly hanging up at the sound of her approaching footsteps?

What she was hoping for now: an early flight back to LAX (she would settle for coach, even, her usual standards shed some time during her sleepless night) a solid few hours back at the office, just to get everything under control again, and a good night’s sleep in her own queen-sized, pillow-topped bed, where all of this would be safely behind her again.

…or at least, shoved to the side, crowded out by meetings and deadlines and product tests and whether or not Luminara really would go to Yoda about Quinlan this time.  (It had only happened once, but it had been ugly enough that Lumi’s threats held weight—with Tahl, anyway.  If Quinlan could process that kind of cause and effect out in the real world, with other humans, and not just inside codes and binaries, he and Luminara wouldn’t constantly be at odds in the first place.) 

What was she was hoping for now: that in a few months, she would call, and Qui-Gon would pick up the phone, and someone (her) would make a joke, and it would have been long enough that it would be okay again.  Or at least, as close to okay as they came anymore. 

As close as a divorce decree she kept still, in a faded manilla folder soft with years of handling, allowed them to be.

It was always a mistake to meet.  It was always a mistake to think they were through hurting each other. 

Would he look for her, back at the hotel?  Would he wonder if she was coming back to say goodbye?  Or was he relieved to have missed her, already on a plane back to New York, already calling his agent about how soon he could be out of the country again, how soon he could put these three days behind him, too? 

Someday…someday, it really would be the last time she saw him.  She knew that.  Would there be a call?  Unanswered voicemails, and then a short, dispassionate message from Mace, that Qui-Gon’s schedule was in flux, and he’d have to get back to her with the specifics at some later, purposely vague date?  How many times would she call the last number she had, before she admitted to herself that he wasn’t ever going to call her back, that whatever still lay between them, whatever tattered shreds they’d been holding onto, he’d decided to finally let go?

Or would it be worse: an earthquake in a part of the world she couldn’t spell, an explosion on a crowded street, a tiny plane, suddenly smoking as it nosedived towards the ground?  She pictured it, not for the fist time: a churchyard packed with strangers who avoided her eyes, a wry and winsome eulogy voiced by someone she’d never met, something in a coffin that had Qui-Gon’s pale skin and high forehead, but held none of his presence, his spirit, his warmth.

Or would it be worse than that: an accident that escaped her notice entirely, an obituary she never read, a funeral she never attended?  Who would think to call the ex-wife, to inform the woman who’d left, who’d long ago chosen something else?

Pain blossomed under her fingertips; she realized she was clutching onto her phone like a life preserver, tight enough to bruise  The slim edges were cutting into her fingers.  With an effort, she softened her grip.  She needed to be stronger than this.  She needed to be someone who could survive twenty-four hours in her ex’s presence without questioning every decision, every moment, every wrong turn. 

She needed, at the very least, to be back in a land with less provincial state laws, where vodka could be bought at Ralphs, and in bulk.

She’d worked too hard to get past it all to let herself get sucked back in now.  If Qui-Gon had something to say to her, he’d call.  If she wanted to call him…well, she might.  But there was nothing to be gained by putting her life on hold to stay with someone who so obviously wanted her gone.  Who had already said as much. 

Maybe she was the one who left, but he was always, always, the one who ended it. 

She realized her fingers were going numb. 

She had to get out of here, now, before she lost her nerve to leave at all.

She focused on the weight of her phone in her hand, the ache in her fingers, the mercy of a solvable problem.  Was she the only person with this problem?  Doubtful.  Was it possible to get callouses from too much time on a smartphone, like a guitarist, but infinitely less cool?  And would associating the two in a TV spot make customers feel like rock stars, or just highlight the disparity between playing Madison Square Garden and playing Temple Run 2?

She made a mental note to mention it to Quinlan anyway.

A name flashed across the screen, and _pretend you didn’t see it_ flashed, swiftly and shamefully, across her mind.  She took a breath of stale airport air and smiled, her lips automatically curving upwards in anticipation of defusing a difficult call, the way she would have with a particularly tricky member of Muja’s board of directors.  She’d heard once that if you smiled on the phone, the person on the other end could feel it, even if they couldn’t see it, and it calmed them.  She had no definitive research on the matter, but it couldn’t hurt, had always been her feeling. 

This was not going to be pleasant. 

“Did the meeting go well?”

“It went,” Qui-Gon replied, the gentle lilt of his voice giving way to a growl that made her regret setting the bar at the dubious height of _well_.  “Where are you?”

She shifted on her heels, too high for so many days of hard airport carpets.  “At the airport,” she said.  “I’m heading back.”

The silence felt too crowded to intrude upon with words. 

“I see,” Qui-Gon said at last, in a tone that indicated that a final grade had been decided on, and it was not a passing one.  “Have a good flight.”

She let out a breath.  “Qui-Gon—”

“Thank you for coming,” he said, the stiff courtesy settling like a wall between them.  “It was thoughtful of you.”

“Of course I came,” she said impatiently.  “And if you need me for anything, I’d be happy to come right back—”

“No, thank you,” Qui-Gon demurred, his tone no longer so much a wall between them as an eighteen-foot prison fence, coiled with barbed wire and guarded by armed patrols.  “I think we’ll manage just fine on our own.”

Of course he would.  She wondered, sometimes, if it were possible for enough time to pass, if ten or twenty or thirty more years could siphon away the anger that still bled into his voice, or if released by fury, he'd finally feel nothing for her at all. 

“‘We’?” she repeated wearily.  “You and Palpatine?”

After almost twenty years, those three syllables shouldn’t still feel like biting into broken glass. 

There was a pause.  It was a familiar one. 

Qui-Gon Jinn might be considered a professional in some circles, an artist, a world traveler, an adult human being…but Tahl Uvain knew better.  Qui-Gon had once smuggled an injured squirrel into his dorm room, and hidden it there for six weeks.  He had once skipped an entire semester’s worth of Speech and Debate, because he “already knew how to talk,” earning a passing grade only because Speech was a prerequisite for graduation, and poor Ms. Yaddle didn’t want to face him again next semester.  He had once climbed in her bedroom window on the night of her parents’ numbing black-tie Christmas party so they could play Super Mario on her Nintendo 64 all night, his gangly frame stretched out on the floor, only barely hidden behind her bed, muffling their laughter as the newly-minted mayor’s speech carried through the floorboards.  He had once talked their art teacher into lending them his car for the weekend, for a “photography project,” so they could drive to Maine for three days of cold, salty waves and steamy car windows.

He had once convinced her that the only way to celebrate their high school graduation was to run away to Las Vegas.

“What did you do?” she demanded.

There was a short cough on the other end, one that indicated that Qui-Gon was, unusually, considering how best to break something to her.  Her alarm shot up from level orange to red alert. 

“Did you kill him?” she asked, the intended humor of the hyperbole falling flat beneath a sudden, genuine concern.  “Do you need help getting rid of the body?”

“I do not require lawyers, guns, or money, no,” Qui-Gon replied, which comforted her not at all.  “Obi-Wan will be staying with me for a while, that’s all.”

For a moment, amidst the roar of airport white noise, she genuinely thought she’d misheard him. 

“He what?”

“I’m bringing Obi-Wan back to New York with me,” Qui-Gon said, a touch of impatience to his voice, as though this was the kind of thing he said all the time, and he was tired of having to repeat it.  “I’ll be taking care of him for the time being.”

If he’d said he really was on his knees beside a corpse with a bottle of bleach, soaking blood out of Palpatine’s office carpet, she could not have been more surprised. 

“For how long?” she demanded, startled beyond carefully chosen words.

Silence.  She could picture him on the other end, ducking his head the way he always did when a phone conversation flummoxed him. 

“Until he’s eighteen,” Qui-Gon said at last, a defensive edge to his tone that could only mean that he was just realizing this now, himself. 

“Qui!” she exclaimed, loudly enough to earn more than a few curious glances from the rest of the line.  “A child is not a stray cat.  You can’t just pick one up and take it home with you!”

“It wasn’t like that,” Qui-Gon insisted, volunteering absolutely no information about what it was like. 

“What did Obi-Wan say to you?”

They’d left Obi-Wan at home last night—or at the house that had been his home, anyway.  Tahl was a human being; she had felt a momentary twinge as they’d driven away.  But she had just met the kid a few hours before.  She’d known him for the span of exactly one burial and one cheeseburger.  Whatever Qui-Gon liked to think about her propensity to inference, she knew when something wasn’t her responsibility.  Muja’s year-end capital gains: her problem.  The fate of a teenager she’d just met: not her table.  Obi-Wan had gotten along the first thirteen years of his life without her, and he’d just have to manage the rest, too. 

As far as she’d known, Qui-Gon hadn’t felt any differently.  Had Obi-Wan gotten in touch with him in some way?  Called Palpatine?  Showed up at the hotel?  Made some desperate, last-minute plea to be saved from state care?  She supposed, if Dooku had been Qui-Gon’s only living relative, and he’d adopted Obi-Wan, that made Qui-Gon Obi-Wan’s only relation…after a fashion.  But Qui-Gon hadn’t known he existed until yesterday, and they’d barely spoken through dinner.  If Tahl had really been a part of Qui-Gon’s world, she might have encouraged him to stay in touch, would have suggested he make the effort…but Qui-Gon had made it clear what he thought about her presence in his life. 

Qui-Gon treasured his solitude.  She spoke three languages, but he delighted in traveling to places where he couldn’t speak a single word.  He worked alone.  He lived alone.  She couldn’t imagine what Obi-Wan could have said to change that.

She waited out another more lengthy—and more troubling—pause.  “I haven’t discussed it with him yet.”

“Jesus fucking _Christ_ ,” Tahl rapped out, incurring the shocked grimace of an elderly man to her left.  She passed a hand over her eyes.  He had to be kidding, but she feared in her bones that he was absolutely serious.  “What do you mean, you haven’t discussed it with him yet?”

“I mean I have yet to discuss it with him,” Qui-Gon replied, a testy edge to his voice.  “I was in…the lawyer’s office,”—Tahl did not miss the way Qui-Gon skirted around the name—“and under the terms of the will—”

Now it was beginning to make sense.  A terrible, horrible, life-as-we-know-it-ending plan was in the works; she should have known it had Sheev Palpatine’s handwriting all over it. 

“This was Palpatine’s idea?”

“It was my idea,” Qui-Gon grated out. 

The irritable tinge to his voice should have stopped her.  It didn’t.

“It was your idea to adopt a thirteen-year-old boy, whom you haven’t even known for twenty-four hours?  You woke up this morning and said, ‘You know what I think I’ll do with the next five years of my life?’”

“I fail to see how this is any of your business,” Qui-Gon cut in. 

“You called me!” she protested, suddenly fourteen years old again, dangerously close to yelling into her phone in the middle of the ticket line of Boston Logan International Airport, for all the world to see. 

Not for the first time, Tahl was grateful that her prestigious job was in a field that meant that neither her face nor her name were recognizable to the general public.  But still, all it would take would be one person who did, and their Muja-competitor manufactured-phone, with its inferior but still quite capable camera…

She took a deep breath.  “All I’m saying is—”

“I know what you’re saying,” Qui-Gon replied, his voice very quiet.  “You don’t think I can do it.”

As a matter of fact, that had been what Tahl had been specifically _not_ saying.  “Of course not,” she argued, in spite of herself.  “But have you thought this through?  Where are you going to live?  Where is he going to sleep?  Who’s going to take care of him while you’re off…photographing polar bears, or something?”

“I have never in my entire life photographed a polar bear.”

Tahl took a deep, cleansing breath, as modeled by her perpetually serene assistant.  It did not help in the slightest.  Perhaps Bant came by her tranquility naturally, and had been misattributing it to yoga all these years.  “You know what I meant.”

“No, but I can’t wait to hear you explain it to me,” Qui-Gon said in a pleasant tone that made her want to reach through the phone and rip his hair out at the root. 

“Well, have you thought about this at _all_ , Qui?” she demanded, diplomacy be damned.  “You barely have a permanent address, you don’t stay in one place for more than a week, you can’t even be reached on the phone half the time; how are you going to take care of a child?  Are you going to move to Boston?  Are you going to take him out of school?  Are you going to move him to New York?  Who’s going to make him dinner and check his homework and…make sure he hasn’t joined a gang or decided to manufacture meth in the basement?

“And if you say ‘I don’t have a basement,’” she continued, before he could cut in, “I swear to God—”

“Ma’am?”

She realized that the people ahead of her in line had at last taken their leave of the ticket counter.  It was finally her turn to book her seat on a flight, now that she was no longer sure she should be leaving the state. 

“You weren’t there,” Qui-Gon said, his voice quiet.  “If you’d been in the room, if you’d read that will…”

“Ma’am?”

“I’m so sorry,” she mouthed, her hand over her phone.  “Family emergency…”

The woman behind the counter was unsympathetic, and Tahl couldn’t blame her.  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to book your ticket, or step out of line, ma’am.”

It had taken her a full forty-five minutes just to make it this far.

Qui-Gon, missing all of this, was still talking, with all the enthusiasm of someone heading off to war.  “I’ve made up my mind, Tahl, I—”

“Some of us have places to be, you know,” crabbed the elderly man she’d offended with her earlier less-than-devout appeal to the Lord, drowning out Qui-Gon’s voice.  “You young people, always on your phones, never thinking about anyone but yourselves…”

 _MUJA VP DECKS OLD MAN IN AIRPORT BRAWL_ flashed in front of her eyes, closely followed by _MUJA VP FORCED TO RESIGN DUE TO PENDING ASSAULT LAWSUIT_ , chased by _DISGRACED AND UNEMPLOYED MUJA  EX-VP CAN’T PAY LEGAL BILLS, CAN’T PAY MORTGAGE, HOPELESSLY SHOPS MEMOIR NO ONE WANTS._

This was what came of trying to book her own ticket, instead of letting her assistant take care of it, like God intended. 

She flashed an apologetic smile at the airline employee behind the counter, holding up a finger in a desperate plea for thirty seconds more, resolutely ignoring the rest of the old man’s tirade about the youth of the nation and the disbelieving groans from the back of the line. 

“Qui,” she sighed, her polite smile straining her face, “I’m going to have to call you back.”


	5. Chapter 5

Qui-Gon flicked his phone to ‘silent’ with an impatient brush of his thumb, burying the little device deep within his coat pocket, a few stray Euros and what might be a dried-up pen clinking noisily against the nicked and dented case, as, with a deep breath, he climbed the pale stone steps to his old home for the first time since he was eighteen years old, the curlicues of the wrought iron railing lining the stairs already making him feel trapped, imprisoned.

He didn't need Tahl to tell him that this was a bad idea.

Dooku had obviously—and unsurprisingly—kept the house up meticulously in Qui-Gon’s absence.  The orange brick of the townhouse had not faded or chipped in the decades since he had last set eyes on it.  The street-facing windows still gleamed, with not a single scratch or smudge in sight.  The flowering tree that had bloomed every spring in front of Dooku’s office window still stood inside its fenced area, dropping fragile pink petals inside its confined space.  Qui-Gon remembered how much he’d despised watching the gardeners cut it back every year, how silly and sentimental Dooku had found his horror, his visceral discomfort when the clippings began to fall. 

“A magnolia tree does not have feelings,” Dooku had sighed, as though the reassurance, flimsy as it was, were costing him something essential to have to express aloud.  “It does not mind being cut back, because it does not _know_ it’s being cut back.  It’s a _tree._ ”

Qui-Gon, long past his youthful romanticism, still couldn’t help but feel that somewhere inside those hidden roots, those dark branches, those hopeful petals, the old magnolia tree probably did know that it wasn’t being allowed to grow freely, and in its own way, mourned the loss.

He had never meant to come back here.

He wished, suddenly, for his cozy loft, full of twining ivy and the outstretched fronds of ferns, shoots reaching cheerfully for the sun, with a longing that was almost a physical ache.  He gripped his hands together to steady himself. 

How he hated this city, this street, this house. 

Through the door’s glass cut-outs, Qui-Gon could spy no signs of life, no sound, no movement.  Had Obi-Wan, impossibly, gone on to school the day after his father’s funeral?  Having never once in his life attended classes when he could possibly finagle a way out of it, Qui-Gon found the idea hard to picture…but he supposed that was what made Obi-Wan the Good Son.  He knocked on the wood frame of the door, gently, and received no reply.  He forced himself to try the door knob.

It would be locked, he told himself.  No one was home.  He’d have to come back.  He was embarrassed by the relief that filled him at the thought of getting away from this place, even briefly, even temporarily.

But the knob gave way easily under his large hand, and Qui-Gon found himself, suddenly, shockingly, inside his adolescent home once more.

It was the same, and it wasn’t.  Ahead of him were the pale curving stairs, where absolutely no running, jumping, or skipping of steps was tolerated.  To the right was the living room, an exercise in ecru, still full of uncomfortable and expensive furniture, dwarfed by an imposing fireplace that was never permitted to be lit.  (A working fireplace added significantly to the property value, but the smoke, as Dooku had explained so many times, would damage the wallpaper.)  Ahead of the stairs, Qui-Gon knew, was the kitchen, a cold, stainless steel expanse that held chilled sparkling water, pungent Gruyère, delicate wafer crackers…and little else.

Or at least, that was the way Qui-Gon remembered it.  He had no way of knowing what might have changed in his absence.  Had Dooku learned to cook for his son?  Had he stood in that once-silent space and whipped up noodle soup and Spaghettios and grilled cheese sandwiches, sliced into perfect triangles for tiny hands?  Had Obi-Wan spread out markers and crayons on the once-spotless ceramic tile?  Had he run in, sweaty and grimy after soccer practice, to grab apple juice or Gatorade or one of the thousand other things Dooku had once thought tacky, childish indulgences?  Would Qui-Gon find pre-cut celery sticks and baby carrots in the fridge, for after-school snacks?

To the left was Dooku’s office…or it had been, before yesterday, when its occupant was put in the ground.  Qui-Gon remembered so clearly those nights of sneaking back into the darkened house, stepping carefully to avoid creaking the old wood planks with his weight, checking for the light streaming beneath the door, as he waited for the inevitable cutting words, called quietly from behind that door, dripping poisonous courtesy. 

_I hope you told Ms. Uvain good night for me._

_You’d think for someone who studies so late, you could manage a C average._

Qui-Gon could still hear Dooku’s voice, crystal clear, floating across the sunlight hallway, like tiny specks of dust sinking into his skin. 

Qui-Gon Jinn did not believe in ghosts.  But the light still shining under that door made him wonder if he could push it open to find Tyranus Dooku’s stiff form behind that desk, papers spread out before his unseeing eyes, a glass of thick ruby port cupped thoughtfully in his palm, a coldly bright smile stretching the peeling flesh of his decaying face. 

But it was a voice lighter and younger than Dooku’s that called, “Is someone there?”

“It’s Qui-Gon Jinn,” Qui-Gon barked, startled badly.  He lightened his tone, scolding himself for his childish fear.  He wasn’t eighteen anymore.  Dooku’s was far from the first funeral he’d attended.  He’d seen death up close, and not the pretty, lily-scented, funeral home kind; he’d photographed mass graves, mangled bomb victims, end-stage ebola patients with death in their sunken eyes.  He resented, bitterly, the goose bumps on his skin and the hair rising on the back of his neck, the feeble reaction of someone far younger and softer than Qui-Gon allowed himself to be.  “Is that Obi-Wan?”

Obi-Wan himself appeared in the doorway, wiping dusty hands on a pair of khakis so neat and tidy they might have been ironed.  The sweater he wore over a collared shirt held not a speck of grime.  His blue eyes blinked at Qui-Gon, confused.  “What are you doing here?”

The conversation to which the answer to this question would lead was going to be lengthy, and Qui-Gon did not feel like holding it here, hovering in the hallway like an intruder.  “May I come in?” he asked, the stiff politeness awkward on his tongue, like speaking a few halting words in a language in which he used to be fluent.

Obi-Wan didn’t say yes, but he let Qui-Gon follow him into Dooku’s office.  Once inside, Qui-Gon wished they’d stayed in the hall.  Dooku’s desk loomed up at him, as though its former inhabitant was listening in to their conversation, and already finding it lacking.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” Qui-Gon asked, trying to be friendly, trying to ease them both into the heart of the subject matter.

Obi-Wan’s expression didn’t change, but it was like a shutter closed behind his eyes.  “The social worker is coming this afternoon,” he said, his voice devoid of feeling.  “I wanted to make sure my things were organized and ready to go.”

“About that,” Qui-Gon began, grateful for the opening.  “I just came from a meeting with…your father’s lawyer, and I thought, instead—“

The phone rang; Obi-Wan picked up on the second ring, as though Qui-Gon weren’t still talking.  “Dooku residence, Obi-Wan speaking,” he answered tonelessly.  He listened carefully.  “I’m sorry, but Mr. Dooku passed away earlier this week.  You’ll have to call his office about who will be taking over your portfolio.”  He rattled off a long string of numbers, said a polite goodbye, hung up, and looked back at Qui-Gon, expectant. 

Qui-Gon was too old to be intimidated by a thirteen-year-old.  An only child, he’d never spent much time around children, even when he was one.  He met them on his travels, of course.  The little girl in Somalia with the soccer ball, the little boy in Bangladesh with the kitten…he liked children, as far as that went.  He enjoyed their honesty and exuberance, their made-up games and unfettered imaginations. 

The compact young man with the crossed arms leaning easily against the heavy oak furniture did not remind him of any of them.  He called to mind someone else who’d sat at that desk, another set of contained features, another pair of proud, knowing eyes. 

Perhaps—shockingly, unfairly—Tahl had been right.  Perhaps, in retrospect, he might have discussed his brave new plan with Obi-Wan before he’d signed on the dotted line in Palpatine’s office. 

But Qui-Gon Jinn, either from stubbornness or hope, honor or stupidity, had never known how to back down from a fight, and he was not going to begin the dubious practice now. 

“We discussed your…situation,” he said, “and…”

Obi-Wan raised one reddish eyebrow, a universe of sardonic understatement carried in the gesture.

Qui-Gon hated when Tahl was right.

Like a drowning man in sight of land, he kept going. 

“You’ll be coming back to New York with me,” he asserted, ripping off the bandage in one go.  If there was a delicate way to break the news, he wasn’t going to find it, not in this lifetime.  “I’m your legal guardian now.”

Gone was the polite expression, the amused eyebrow, the tight smile.  “You what?” Obi-Wan demanded, pushing away from his perch on the desk.  Qui-Gon towered over him, but Obi-Wan’s bearing did not suggest knowledge, much less acceptance, of this fact.   

He had looked less upset at the diner last night, talking about foster care.

This possibility had not occurred to Qui-Gon.

He tried again.  “Under the terms of the will—”

“I’ve read the will,” Obi-Wan interrupted.  “It doesn’t say anything about my going off to New York to live with you.  It says, in fact, specifically, that my father would have preferred _any_ other arrangement.”

Qui-Gon hadn’t had time to exactly imagine this conversation in any kind of detail, but he’d expected the _tone_ of the dialogue to be rather different.  He had expected, perhaps, a modicum of gratitude.  Of _appreciation_ , at the very least.

His voice was quiet.  “It says that I’m your only living relative—”

Obi-Wan’s face was scornful.  “ _Technically_.”

The barb hit tender flesh, grown unused to such attacks in the ten years since Qui-Gon had walked out of this house.

Qui-Gon let the words pass without comment. 

“…and that as such,” he continued, four words he was positive he had never uttered before in his life, and hoped never to speak again, “you are my legal responsibility.”  He took a breath.  “And I intend to fulfill that responsibility.”

Obi-Wan stared at him like he’d just announced his intention to sell tickets to human sacrifices in the Public Garden on alternate Fridays. 

By this time, Qui-Gon had assumed that Obi-Wan would be thanking him.  Instead, he watched Obi-Wan clench his fists, to contain himself or in preparation for taking a swing at him, Qui-Gon didn’t know.

“I wasn’t expecting any of this…and I know neither were you,” he added, belatedly, into the silence.  “We don’t know each other.  I can’t pretend this is ideal.  You just lost your father, and I certainly wasn’t planning to take in a thirteen-year-old.  This will be an adjustment…for both of us.”

Obi-Wan remained silent.  Qui-Gon couldn’t guess what he was thinking.  Dread?  Relief?  Was he just waiting for Qui-Gon to go, so he could call Palpatine and get himself put in a group home, to accede to his father’s wishes?

Qui-Gon couldn’t imagine missing Dooku, or this house, this life.  But Obi-Wan was not him.  Would he insist on going against Qui-Gon’s wishes, to honor his father’s?

As with most things he associated with his late uncle, Qui-Gon’s knowledge of the law was a kind of vague, fuzzy understanding, tempered with a strong suspicion, much the way he thought of nuclear physics, or voodoo.  _Could_ Obi-Wan outright refuse?  Did Palpatine have some kind of legal recourse?

Tahl, he knew, would have pulled out her phone, tapped through a few screens, and reported back thirty seconds later with a consummate reckoning of New England custody law.  Qui-Gon preferred to assume that most obstacles could be overcome in the moment, dealt with as they arose.

It was a philosophy that worked just fine…. _most_ of the time.      

He pressed on.  “We didn’t get a chance to speak much last night.  I don’t know if you remember, but I have a place in New York.  That’s where I live.  It’ll be…a little cramped, of course, but I’m sure we can make it work.”

Qui-Gon, picturing the dimensions of the aforementioned loft, was not sure that it would work at all, but kept that particular nagging doubt to himself. 

“New York is full of good schools,” he continued.  He had absolutely no practical experience with this himself, but he was sure it was true.  He’d heard it mentioned in passing, hadn’t he?  Mace would know, probably.  Mace didn’t have children himself, but he knew everybody.  “I’m sure we’ll have no problem getting you enrolled in one of them.”

He didn’t know that either, but it also sounded true.

Obi-Wan, if possible, appeared even more horrified at this prospect. 

Qui-Gon cleared his throat.  This was not coming out right at all.  He knew it, but he could not fix it.  “I don’t know…how much supervision you’re accustomed to.  I travel quite a bit for my work, but…”

He sighed, giving up on finding a positive spin.  He would, as he’d been told many times, never make a good salesman.  He was not anyone’s idea of an ideal parent, substitute or otherwise.  He had not been Dooku’s, and he was clearly not Obi-Wan’s.  But he’d known that going in.

“It’s either this or foster care, Obi-Wan.  Would you prefer that?”

Obi-Wan’s stricken face suggested that, in fact, he might.

Maybe…maybe that was just as well.  It was a bitter pill to swallow, but if Obi-Wan out and out refused to come with him…if he’d rather wait for the social worker to assign him to some Boston foster home…

Qui-Gon might be many things, but a kidnapper he was certainly not.  Let Obi-Wan become a ward of the state, if that was what he chose.  Qui-Gon could be out of here within the day, this whole mess behind him.  He’d take the first flight out of Logan, no matter where it was headed; he’d call Mace from the airport; there had to be a story unfolding somewhere that could get him out of the country before the week was out…

He’d been to Australia once, six perfect weeks of salt tangling his hair and sea air filling his lungs.  He’d always said he’d go back someday, maybe move there.  Maybe he finally would.  He could be in Sydney by tomorrow night, and see the sun rise on the other side of the world…

“What work?” Obi-Wan ventured at last.

It took Qui-Gon a moment to understand.  “I’m a photographer.  Did Dooku…did your father never mention that?”

Obi-Wan hesitated just a moment too long, his expression troublingly bland.  “He didn’t talk about you very much at all,” he said carefully.

Of course he hadn’t. 

“Well,” Qui-Gon continued, as though the slight didn’t somehow, stupidly, still sting, “I take pictures.  All over the world.  Freelance, generally.  My focus is on the human side of larger news stories, though less from a human interest perspective than from a humanitarian one…” 

He coughed, uncomfortable with his teenage audience’s polite, disinterested attention.  Surely Obi-Wan didn’t care about any of that.  “What, if I might ask, did he say?”

Obi-Wan tilted his head thoughtfully.  Qui-Gon had the distinct impression that he was filtering through a series of remarks, searching for the least objectionable. 

“He said you were very different people,” Obi-Wan answered at last.

Qui-Gon feared for what water-down version of Dooku’s actual words he was hearing, and in what judgmental context they’d been originally presented.  “True enough.”

Obi-Wan didn’t smile, but there was a suggestion of humor in his bright blue eyes…and possibly at Qui-Gon’s expense.   

His pale features were set.  “When would we have to leave?”

Sydney, it seemed, was not to be, after all.

Qui-Gon did not know whether to be glad that he’d been found worthy of consideration, or horrified that there would be no last-minute stay of execution, no loophole through which to wiggle out of the trouble in which he’d now thoroughly entangled himself. 

They were, it seemed, going to do this thing, in spite of themselves.

“The sooner the better,” he answered.

* * *

 

It had taken two days, in the end, to pack up Obi-Wan’s clothes and books (so many books), to acquire his transcripts from Boston Latin, to schedule a last meeting with Palpatine on the details of Obi-Wan’s trust.  (Qui-Gon had waited outside.  Obi-Wan had emerged, finally, long after Qui-Gon had expected the meeting to be over.  He had not found the nerve to ask what they had discussed.)

He and Obi-Wan spoke hardly at all.

If Qui-Gon had had more experience with teenagers, he kept telling himself, he might have known how to interpret Obi-Wan’s reticence.  A man of few words himself, he was used to others filling his own silence.  He liked quiet.  He had never been someone who needed constant chatter to feel comfortable. 

But Obi-Wan’s reserve gnawed at him.  Was he angry at Qui-Gon?  Grieving his father?  Planning to disappear from Qui-Gon’s side and hop a Greyhound the second they left the state? 

But when the moment had come, and Obi-Wan had walked out of his childhood home for the last time (he’d be back, of course he’d be back, he still owned the house, but Qui-Gon knew it would never be the same) his jaw set, his eyes clear, Qui-Gon had had to avert his eyes, the right words for the moment trapped somewhere between his brain and his tongue.

He knew, better than Obi-Wan could know, what that moment felt like, the way it lived in your bones.

Then Obi-Wan turned his back, and got in the cab.  They didn’t speak all the way to Logan, through security, to the gate.

If Qui-Gon had thought that they might connect on the plane, he was disappointed.  Obi-Wan pulled out a book ( _I, Claudius: From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius_ , by Robert Graves) before they even left the ground, and did not lift his eyes from its pages until well after they touched down again.

“Is that for school?” Qui-Gon ventured, as the rocky coats and structured green squares of New England disappeared beneath them.

Obi-Wan didn’t look up.  “I’m not in school anymore, remember?”

Qui-Gon did not try again. 

They landed in New York, and Obi-Wan marked his page, stowed his book carefully in his backpack, and waited patiently, arms crossed.  They made their way, through the mess of people, off the plane, through the gate, and into the cavernous, blue-carpeted jungle of JFK.  Dozens of people waited outside McDonald’s, the line snaking down the terminal, the smell of deep-fried potatoes filling Qui-Gon’s lungs.  Then came the sharper, clearer scent of fresh-brewed Starbucks coffee, and the sweeter, spicier air wafting from Cinnabon.  The cries and whimpers of fussy babies echoed to the metal girders, cutting though the relentless buzz of a thousand voices overlapping one another, English and Hindi and Spanish and Arabic, all joining together in an unceasing hum of strangers sharing a single space.   

If Obi-Wan was intimidated, he did not show it.

Qui-Gon took a deep breath, of sweat and canned air and grilled chipotle peppers, and felt something inside himself uncoil.

It was good to be home.

Obi-Wan, meanwhile, was gazing into the soft lights of Deep Blue Sushi.

“Are you hungry?” Qui-Gon remembered to ask, belatedly. 

Obi-Wan paused.  “I could eat,” he said casually, which Qui-Gon interpreted to mean that he was fast approaching death by starvation. 

They wound up sharing a cramped table outside a Panda Express.  Qui-Gon pushed around his mushroom chicken and watched Obi-Wan attack two spring rolls and a serving each of fried rice and beef and broccoli, the food disappearing at an astonishing rate, given that Obi-Wan was a person, and not an industrial vacuum cleaner. 

Was there any food at all in Qui-Gon’s kitchen?  A dusty box of tea, probably…a single package of ramen, the seasoning packet long gone…

He was going to have to brave the grocery store, a place he usually avoided like a virulent plague…and soon, or Obi-Wan was liable to eat _him_.

Tahl would, no doubt, have come to that realization on the plane, placed an order while still in the air, and come home to a delivery of fruits, vegetables, prepared meals, and every snack food under the sun. 

Qui-Gon pushed the thought away, guiltily. 

He’d already ignored two of her calls.

It was hard enough to handle his own doubts, today, sitting across the table from a thirteen-year-old stranger he was suddenly expected to know how to feed, house, and emotionally support.  He couldn’t deal with hers, as well.

He never could.

He realized Obi-Wan had said something.  “I’m sorry?”

“I said,” Obi-Wan repeated patiently, “are you going to finish that?”

Qui-Gon shook his head and pushed his plate across the table, to something that was almost, but not quite, a grateful smile. 

Perhaps the key to success was going to be to keep his new charge very, very well fed.

His new feeling of positivity lasted exactly until the cab deposited them, tense, weary, and laden with baggage, both physical and less tangible, in front of his home.

The moment Qui-Gon had laid eyes on this place, four years ago, he had fallen in love.  The old warehouse, derelict and all but abandoned, had seemed to cry out to him, whimpering for love and attention like a neglected puppy.  The faded, mismatched orange and red brick had appeared, to him, as a mosaic, a work of art, vibrant and singular, against a desolate sepia urban landscape.  The wide, dented bay doors had whispered to him of opaque glass that would let in an ocean of light for his beloved plants.  The east-facing second-floor windows, cracked and splintered, promised a view of the sunrise over the city that he would never grow tired of, no matter how many times he beheld it.  He’d stepped inside that first time, and the cement floors and graffitied brick walls had called to him like a siren song, a place he could finally call home, as far away from the uncomfortable Chippendale chairs and untouchable beige walls of Dooku’s townhouse as he could possibly get. 

Obi-Wan tilted his head upwards, his thoughts clearly running along a similar—though far less flattering—path.  “This is where you _live_?” he asked, a blandly polite query but for the slight and unambiguously disparaging emphasis on the last word. 

It was, somehow, exactly what Dooku would have said.

Qui-Gon hefted Obi-Wan’s bags and pushed through the heavy metal security door.  (He could have changed it out for something more typical, more residential…but why?)  Silently, Obi-Wan followed him inside. 

His plants were still alive, was the first thing Qui-Gon noticed.  His ivy still twined above the doorway, just brushing the top of his head.  His beloved fern, the first plant he had ever raised, was a healthy green.  His dieffenbachia had grown in his absence, tender new shoots raised towards the light.  His pitcher plant had lost its pink-toned pitchers, as it did every winter, but the delicate tendril it had wrapped around the cord of a nearby lamp made him smile. 

He had missed them.

He’d have to think Mace for making sure they were watered regularly.  Not that Mace had performed so pedestrian a task himself—as far as Qui-Gon could tell, most of what Mace did was arranging for other people to do things—but still, he’d taken care of it.  And it would, at least, make a more pleasant beginning to a conversation that would include the bad news that he wouldn’t be available for international work just now, and end with a request for a good word at his agent’s best recommendation of a New York day school.   

He glanced over at his new charge, who hadn’t spoken since Qui-Gon had unlocked the door.

Obi-Wan was looking up, as well, but not at the trailing ivy.

Qui-Gon tracked his gaze, seeing his beloved little loft, unwillingly, through Obi-Wan’s eyes, through Dooku’s eyes, from his unmade bed (visible from the doorway, he only just noticed now) to the hairline fractures snaking through the walls.  He saw, now, the ad hoc kitchen, the cabinets missing their doors, the diminutive sink that had originally been installed as an eyewash stand, a safety feature in case of chemical spills.  He saw the bathroom, behind its heavy metal door, with a single compact shower and three separate walled-off stalls.  He saw the dinged and battered concrete floor, splotched at odd intervals with a substance to which Qui-Gon had never quite put a name.  (“Blood,” Tahl had hypothesized succinctly as hd’d shoved his only suit into his duffel bag, yet to be unpacked from his previous trip.  “You are living your own gothic murder mystery.”  A ridiculous, melodramatic assessment, he’d thought at the time, but unable to refute it with a more positive explanation for the rust-colored stains carpeting his floor, he’d merely grunted repressively in response.)  He saw the abrupt climb of the steel stairs, bisecting the space and canopying his bed, and heard, even in the silence, the harsh groan they gave whenever trespassed upon by a human foot, as though resentful of having their  well-deserved respite disturbed.

Obi-Wan cleared his throat. 

Qui-Gon waited for sentence to be passed, for the crushing blow to be delivered.

“Where will I sleep?”

Of course that was what Obi-Wan was thinking.  Of course that was what was on his mind, not some comprehensive disapproval of all of Qui-Gon’s life choices, as exemplified by his abode. 

He’d allowed himself to be psyched out by a thirteen-year-old, and he was embarrassed.

He cleared his throat, grateful that Obi-Wan, at least, couldn’t know what he was thinking.  “This way,” he said, gesturing up the stairs.

The stairs seemed to creak more than usual, an ominous accompaniment to Obi-Wan’s arrival.  It reminded Qui-Gon of the expository scenes of a horror movie he’d seen once, the sepulchral moan of the organ music as Count Dracula had led his doomed new librarian up the steps of the castle.

He wished he could have called Tahl.  It would have made her laugh, a rare thing these days…at least where he was concerned.

He wondered, sometimes, if there was someone back in Coruscant who was the grateful recipient of that silvery giggle, if there had been someone waiting for her at home…

He never asked, just as she never inquired as to whether, out on the road, he always slept alone.

At least they had managed to spare each other that.

Obi-Wan dropped his suitcase on the cement floor with a dull _thud_ , looking up at him with a very pointed expression.

The loft was a bright, airy space, with walls to the ceiling on three sides and open to the rest of the apartment on one.  There were a few plants sharing the space, but Qui-Gon used it mostly as storage for his pictures, laid out across a table and stacked against the three walls.  It wasn’t Obi-Wan’s bedroom back in Boston, of course, but…

Too late, Qui-Gon understood the problem.

“We’ll get a bed,” he promised, belatedly.

Obi-Wan sighed, audibly, the kind of sigh that was less an exhalation and more a suggestion of unutterable phrases.

Tahl would probably have remembered that a boy needed somewhere to sleep, and irrationally, he found himself irritated at her for her hypothetical foresight. 

“What do you think…otherwise?” he ventured, uncomfortably aware that he was setting himself up.

_Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?_

Obi-Wan was silent, his head tilting up at the dusty rafters high above, his blue eyes a swirling storm in his mild face.  “I’m not sure what I was expecting,” he said at last, “but guess I assumed it would come with the standard number of walls.”

“Well, I hate to do what’s expected of me,” Qui-Gon said, unsure if Obi-Wan would appreciate his attempt at humor, or if this would be a sentence he’d be repeating to a variety of therapists in the years to come.

The corner of Obi-Wan’s mouth turned upwards in sardonic agreement.  “So I’ve heard.”

Qui-Gon wasn’t sure if _he_ should be appreciating Obi-Wan’s attempt at humor, or if that assessment would be one he’d be repeating inside his own head, in the years to come.

He moved forwards, grabbing a stack of photographs, the people in them staring solemnly up at him, from a time when this moment would have been inconceivable to him.  “I’ll get this all cleared out by tonight,” he promised.  “Will the couch be all right tonight, and we’ll go furniture shopping”—two words that filled him with an unholy dread—“tomorrow?”

Obi-Wan nodded, and Qui-Gon wished, with a sudden, burning ferocity, that he was the kind of man who lived in a regular apartment, who had a spare room with four walls, who had an extra bed.

He turned, to start hauling photographs down the stairs.

“Qui-Gon?”

It was the first time Obi-Wan had called him by name.

He stopped.  “Yes, Obi-Wan?”

Was he hungry?  Tired?  Angry about his makeshift bedroom?  About New York in general?  Or maybe he was about to share something real, something meaningful: grief for his father, his home in Boston, his friends, his old life?

Obi-Wan’s smile was tight.  “Is there wifi here?”


	6. Chapter 6

Some days, when her alarm went off at a quarter past six, as her hands searched blindly through the rustling folds of her crisp white duvet for her phone, her eyelids heavy, Tahl wished, traitorously, for her long-gone, old-school thirty-dollar RadioShack clock radio, which she could have thrown against the wall with a resounding _smash_.

It would have been a far more soothing start to her day than the soft, gently intensifying chimes of Muja’s award-winning Time app.

A morning person, Tahl Uvain had never been.

She pushed her sleep mask up her forehead (the one with _Fuck Off_ embroidered in magenta script on the organic black mulberry silk) and her scarf off her hair and squinted in the pale light streaming through the two glass walls of her bedroom, rolling grumpily to her side to blink at her phone.  She flicked past notifications prophesying a full day ahead: Yoda wanted a meeting “aspap” (her boss, as Tahl had often had occasion to reflect, despite being the founder and CEO of one of the most successful tech startups in history, could not type for shit; his emails were, alway, almost indecipherable), Luminara needed to have a “serious conversation” about discretionary departmental budgeting (which would, inevitably, lead Tahl to hauling department heads into her office for similarly unpleasant dialogues), her mother, due to the eight-hour time difference between Coruscant to London, wanted to know if now was a good time for a video call…

She hadn’t even crawled out from beneath the covers yet, and already she was exhausted.

She allowed herself a good, satisfying groan (and a self-indulgent one; who had less to complain about than she did?  Who had more reason be excited to begin a new day?) before she forced herself out from beneath her duvet and matching silk sheets, soft and weightless for California heat.  She grabbed her robe off the end of the bed and wrapped it around herself, more out of habit than cold; even at six in the morning, even in January, Coruscant’s temperatures didn't dip below fifty degrees.  She turned off the flatscreen mounted on the wall opposite, still playing silently from last night, as well as the sleek white-noise machine on the delicate table by her low bed.  Tahl didn’t consider herself an insomniac; her mind was a busy place, that was all.  It always had been.  It was what kept her sharp, kept her on top.  And it wasn’t like she needed an Ambien _every_ night…just sometimes.  A little often lately, if she were being totally honest with herself, a practice Tahl found best to avoid before ten-thirty and at least a second cup of coffee.  She usually crawled into bed around one or two am, and she flipped the machine to the soft sonic waterfall effect of something whimsically called “pink noise,” and she muted the TV and set it to whatever was on HBO, and most of the time, that was enough to dull the roaring in her head.  She didn’t need much sleep, anyway.  It was barely an issue; it was under control.       

The hardwood was smooth and cool beneath her bare feet as she made her way sleepily to the kitchen.  She pulled a pristine white ceramic mug down from the exposed shelving and placed it beneath the brewer of her bright blue compact Keurig coffeemaker.  Was it worse to perpetually throw out the wasted coffee made by a traditional drip coffeemaker, when she only ever drank one cup at home, or to have spent a hundred and thirty dollars on a kitchen appliance?  At least, she figured, settling wearily onto one of the tall bar stools at her oversize kitchen island, her hot cup cradled between her hands, it had come in a nice color…

The sun was beginning to come up, now, casting streaks of warm light across her shoulders, her hands, the bare white granite of her countertops.  She’d bought this house, two years ago, in part for the location, when an hour of struggling through LA traffic each way had diminished the appeal of her beloved Los Feliz Spanish bungalow.  Real estate in Coruscant certainly wasn’t any cheaper than in Los Angeles, and the cost of living was no lower; Coruscant was a town of tech executives and startup billionaires, clustered with juice bars and raw vegan food trucks, the kind of neighborhood where the woman who waved you ahead in traffic might turn out to be a CEO, where the quiet guy in sweatpants in line behind of you in Whole Foods might have invented the GPS, or 3D printing, or Candy Crush…or might be a civilian, struggling to pay his mortgage in one of the best—and thus most expensive—school districts in the country. 

But the ten-minute drive to Muja’s corporate headquarters wasn’t all that this house had had to recommend it.  She’d been resigned to losing her cozy, sunny little house, all bright light and warm colors.  But this place…she’d walked in, and everything had faded away: the click of her heels on the pale tile, the chattering of the real estate agent, the buzzing of software hitches and product deadlines and the endless of politicking of the board of directors, all quieting at the clean lines, the soft, diffuse lighting, the full walls of windows.  The kitchen looked out on a secluded patio, nestled around a small, clear pool.  There was, of course, an Olympic-sized lap pool at Muja’s company gym…but this little oasis had whispered to her of private swims, of a glass of chilled white wine, sipped in the dark, of watching the sun go down over her own little patch of earth.  She’d walked into the bedroom (the real estate agent had been saying something about investments and property values, but Tahl, for once in her life, had stopped listening) and sat down on the low white bed, set against a black granite wall.  Through the clear glass, the pool was barely a few steps away.  She hadn’t even seen the bathroom yet, and she knew she was going to buy it.  This place had promised a sanctuary.  An escape.  A respite.

Two years later, and she still considered it one of the better choices she’d ever made.

She took another long sip of dark roast, checked the time on her phone (6:43 am, still plenty of time to make it to the office by 7:30) and padded to the bathroom to turn on the shower.  The water, already piping hot, slapped rhythmically against the blue tile, steam from the overhead rain shower already fogging up the oversize mirror, nearly as wide as the room.  There was no overhead lighting at all, but discreet sconces set in the walls and ceiling, as gentle as it was possible to be.  Her mother, Adi Gallia, a famed London socialite turned Boston political wife, always said that the secret to beauty was good lighting and an antique mirror.  Tahl was beginning to think it was not letting yourself look in any reflective surfaces before noon. 

Her dark brown skin looked ashy, even to her own bleary eyes.  Her dark hair, cropped to slightly below shoulder-length, waved against her collarbone; she’d have to run a flatiron over it before she left the house.  The circles under her hazel eyes, her father’s eyes, stared back at her accusingly.  On Finis Valorum Uvain, those dark circles made him look distinguished, compassionate, as though he were kept up nights working for the welfare of his constituents.  Tahl just looked tired and depleted.  Sighing, she screwed the skinny green top off of her in-case-of-emergency-break-glass La Mer The Concentrate, a magic potion that smoothed and brightened to the tune of three hundred and sixty dollars an ounce, promising herself as she massaged the serum upwards over her high cheekbones in concentric circles that she’d take an Ambien with a cup of chamomile tea tonight and put herself to bed by midnight.

But she had an email update to the shareholders to send and a talk with Quinlan to have about ongoing project development and a call she owed her mother and her hair was due a relaxing treatment and--

And it had been days, and she still hadn't heard from Qui-Gon.

His silence was as far from a surprise as it was possible to be, his sudden distance as inevitable as a zit before a first date or a crisis on launch day, and still, it grated on her, gnawing at the edges of her mind like dark flashed in her peripheral vision.  After all this time, how could she still not know better?  How could she still think anything between them could end differently?

But in those few hours in New York, before they had known of Dooku’s thoroughly untimely demise (and it surprised her not at all that even in death the man had managed to ruin their night; Tahl had never believed in any kind of an afterlife, but she could perfectly picture Tyranus Dooku taking a break from floating on clouds—or from taking a steam bath down below—to thwart her one last time) there had been something…something in the sudden pounding of her heartbeat when she’d first spied his powerful frame in the lobby of that hotel, in the rare ease in her chest as she sat across from him at dinner, in the the familiar feel of his warmth against her in the elevator…

Tahl wasn’t a child any longer, not a naive eighteen-year-old, and she didn’t let herself use the word _love_ anymore _,_ not in years and years.  But there was…a _connection_ , something that couldn’t be starved out by time or distance or misunderstandings…

How could there still be something so strong between them, after so many years?  And why, why, _why_ couldn’t she let it go?

Well, she wasn't calling this time, that was for damn sure. If Qui-Gon Jinn wanted her help with the suddenly orphaned adolescent he had taken home like a stray cat, if his completely unplanned plan wasn't working out, he could just pick up a phone and tell her that himself.  And she wasn't going to make it easy on him, either.  This time, she was going to--

Her phone rang.

She didn’t even have to check the face flashing on the screen to know who it was calling her at this early hour, and it wasn't Qui.  “Bant,” she sighed.  “What’s this morning’s catastrophe?”

* * *

There was something, always, about driving through the gleaming metal gates of Muja's Coruscant campus, the high, bright walls parting to let her in, the security guard recognizing her on sight, requiring not even a flash of her employee badge, that filled Tahl with a giddy, gleeful sense of belonging.  She worked here, in this sprawling complex that built the future.  She _ran_ this place.  She was a part of Muja, as much as its lightning-fast wifi and eager CalTech grads, its aggressively modern architecture and eco-conscious green spaces.  She’d fought tooth and nail her entire life to get here, and she’d made it, here among the lush, verdant lawns and precisely maintained zen gardens that cradled the glass- and metal-clad structures where some of the most advanced computers, phones, and cameras on Earth were designed, prototyped, and marketed.  This place was her playground, her battleground, her domain. 

She slid her Mustang into her personal parking space, her name embossed on a plaque above, and took a deep breath of freshly mowed grass, a queen surveying her territory.  Wide-eyed visitors followed a tour guide through the public spaces, and she smiled as a girl in the back of the crowd stared openly at her; in ten years, would Tahl be interviewing her?  Employees poured into the main building, pulling lab coats over hoodies, or typing away eagerly on phones or tablets about the day ahead.  She hefted her bag over her shoulder and walked through the executive parking lot, stopping at the crosswalk before the roaring boulevard that looped through Muja’s complex of buildings, where huge and expensive topiaries in the shape of Muja’s iconic logo design—aesthetically, but somewhat dangerously, she’d always thought—hid the unsightly view of oncoming traffic.  The speed limit everywhere on campus was a solid, unyielding thirty-five miles per hour, but code geniuses and corporate honchos were not a patient lot, and the speed of the cars blowing past averaged nearer to sixty-five.  The cars speeding past paused at the sight of her, brakes hurriedly slammed to let Ms. Uvain pass, as they would for Yoda himself.  At first, the deference had taken her off guard; now, she could appreciate the gesture…even if it only meant that her employees, down to the lowliest Starbucks runner, were smart enough not to risk running their Prius over the senior VP of one of the most successful companies in the world…even if it would get her off their backs about product deadlines. 

Climbing the steep pale stone steps of Muja's main building, the address that was the default for all products manufactured by the company, still made Tahl’s heart beat faster, as she stepped into another world, a hidden sanctuary full of secret labs and the smartest, coolest, craziest people she’d ever been lucky enough to meet, all gathered under one giant solar-paneled roof.  The people on Muja's payroll ("the kids” as Tahl sometimes thought of them) were a cross-section of some of the most talented designers, administrators, engineers, programmers, inventors, and public relations specialists on the planet.  And when her platform heels clicked against the marble floors, they all looked up from their specially-designed cubicles, eager for her to see and appreciate their hard work, their enthusiasm, their long hours and hyper-creativity.  Everybody at Muja, Inc., wanted to impress the lady in charge.  Every day, Tahl strove to be worthy of that respect. 

Some days, that thought was an inspirational one.  Some days…it made her want to spike her morning vanilla almond milk latte.

“It’s under control,” were the first words out of Bant’s mouth when Tahl walked through the big glass double doors of Muja's executive offices, the unprompted assurance a sure sign that Ragnorak-level disaster was nigh. 

Tahl cheerfully returned the “Good Morning”s of her office staff; it would not do for all the administrative assistants to know that their boss had already given up on the idea for the day.  Bant followed her into her big corner office, her assistant’s demeanor perfectly serene, except for the pastel-painted fingers worrying a loose strand of ginger hair. 

“You only say that when it’s not,” Tahl sighed, putting her heavy Birkin bag (weighed down with both a laptop and a tablet) down absently on the clear glass of her big Lucite desk.  At least Bant hadn’t closed the door behind them; that would have meant Tahl would be starting her day by firing someone, or speaking to the police, or once, memorably, both. 

(Quinlan’s ex Asajj had truly cut a swath through the well-tended streets of Coruscant, California.)

“It’s going to be fine,” Bant insisted, clinging to her optimism as a drowning man would a half-inflated buoy.  “There’s just one teeny little… _hitch_ —”

“Comforting, that is not,” said a familiar gravely voice as the chair behind Tahl’s desk slowly swiveled around.

Behind her, Bant let out a startled squeak, her milky skin flushing pink.  “I didn’t…”

 _What is Yoda really like?_ was the question Tahl was asked the most about her job, followed closely by _Can you get me a free charger?  I lost mine._ Everybody wanted the dirt on the reclusive, eccentric genius who founded one of the world’s most successful companies in a garden shed in his parents’ backyard, who still did all his design work in a comparable cabin on the back of Muja’s property, who was described most often by bemused interviewers and disgruntled ex-employees alike as “mercurial,” whose rare public appearances were the stuff of Silicon Valley legend, or tabloid fodder, or both.

The truth, she supposed, was that Yoda was someone you weren’t surprised to find camped out in your locked office in the dark, awaiting your arrival to catch you off guard.

In person, Yoda was always shorter than you expected, particularly if you’d only known him from TED talks and TV screens, where the energy of his presence always made him seem twice his size.  His balding head barely grazed the top of her desk chair; his feet dangled, not quite touching the floor.  He spoke barely at all, particularly when he was tired, or hungry, or irritable, which were three of his most prevalent emotions.  When he did speak, it was frequently to voice the kind of blunt, well-aimed observations that rang in your ears even years later, often late at night when you were trying to sleep.  He was a strict taskmaster who suffered no fools, particularly not those in his employ.  More than once, Tahl had had to speak to a former employee who was considering a lawsuit on the grounds of wrongful termination and emotional damages.  In her years at Muja, she had never once heard him raise his voice; Yoda didn't need to.  In his own domain--and most of the world--his word was law.  It was, Tahl sometimes thought, like being the senior Vice President to Zeus, running around Mount Olympus after him, trying to convince him to be careful with his bolts of lightning. 

“Morning, boss,” she said briskly.  Half the reason Yoda needed her in this job was because of her knack for handling a man who was whimsical on a good day, and downright batshit on a bad.  “Can Bant get you something?”  she offered, her voice mild, as though her pulse were not still racing.  “Coffee?  Tea?”

Yoda’s dark glare expressed his feelings on both her choice of beverages and her attempt to stall for time.  Yoda drank only home-brewed algae-flavored kombucha, a muddy, seaweed-colored liquid redolent of swap water, which some of the more suggestible interns remained convinced it was.

"I wouldn't mind a fresh coffee," she said as she sat down in the chair in front of her own desk, flashing Bant a wry smile and a raised eyebrow to let her know she wasn't upset with her.  Blaming anyone for Yoda’s behavior was like suing the hurricane that swept away your beach house.  Certain acts of God simply couldn’t be forestalled or prevented, no matter how careful or conscientious you might be.

With a rueful smile, and a polite nod at Yoda, Bant backed out the door, closing it behind her.  She wouldn't bring the coffee; _wouldn't mind a fresh coffee_ was code for _close the door and hold my calls, I have a crisis to manage_.

Yoda waited for Tahl to make the first move, his dark green eyes swirling with barely repressed irritation.

But two could play that game.  Tahl leaned back in her chair, propping her purple Louboutins up on the desk. 

The silence stretched between them.  Tahl let her gaze drift out her clear-glass window, to Muja's perfectly manicured grounds, the lawns of rolling green as far as her eye could see.  Despite the stress and headaches that often accompanied her presence here, she did love this office, this city, this coast…

…the hedges were uneven, though.  She should speak to someone in landscape about that.  It was a small thing, but presentation mattered…

"Know why I'm here, you do," Yoda said finally, in the peculiar syntax that had its own parody on Saturday Night Live, its own meme on Twitter, and its own drinking game in the dorms at Berkeley.  But that was outside.  Inside Muja's complex of buildings, people were far too busy jumping at Yoda's slightest whisper to give a shit about how he chose to express himself. 

Tahl didn't, as a matter of fact, know why Yoda was there, but she had learned long ago that admitting to ignorance was always the wrong answer.  "I gather that you're unhappy about something," she said, in a dry tone that suggested that she did, in fact, know exactly to what he was referring, and had long been expecting—nay, _awaiting_ —him to bring it up. 

Yoda's eyes narrowed. 

Silence stretched between them again. 

“The new camera app,” he grunted at last.

Ah.  Now, Tahl understood—though she wished she didn’t.

The new camera app had been a subject of some contention eighteen months ago, when Yoda had delivered his original design to the shareholders.  Meaning Tahl had expressed her deep concern over both the viability of the design and the salability of the final product, and had been summarily snowed under by Yoda’s enthusiasm for his sketch.  Which Tahl did not mind—he was the CEO, she was not—but now that replicating the prototype had proven troublesome, she was in the awkward but not unpleasant position of having been right to begin with.  Reminding Yoda that she had _told him so_ would be enjoyable, but neither politic nor helpful, and so she settled on a more diplomatic reply.

“I’m told it’s coming along,” she said carefully. 

Yoda snorted.  “Misinformed, you may be.”

The idea was a simple one: an app that automatically focused the front-facing or back-facing camera, based on the way the phone was held, thus eliminating the time lag in switching between the two.  The stockholders had been beside themselves with joy; a feature none of Muja’s competitors were even working on!  Marketing was already mocking up commercials and ads based on the supposed lightning-fast reaction time of the new camera.  But Tahl was, unfortunately, not mistaken about their progress; she knew perfectly well that the app took too long to focus, that the pictures were lower quality than with the previous design, and that the app, two times out of five, chose the wrong camera.  It was late January.  To make Black Friday sales, historically one of the best-selling days for their products, the new phone model, complete with the new camera, needed to be in stores by Thanksgiving.  Tahl hadn’t given up hope entirely, but she was too practical to keep throwing good money (and time, and employee goodwill) after bad.  The time was soon coming when they’d have to either make it work, inform the shareholders that the new camera would not be on the new phone, or shelve the idea altogether.  But that day, at least, was not quite today.

“I have complete and total faith in our team,” she offered.  That, at least, was true. 

Yoda grunted, obviously not soothed.  Tahl wouldn’t have been, either. 

She could restate her concerns about the project, both as a whole and in connection with the November roll-out deadline.  She could, alternately, express her somewhat false enthusiasm for the design, but suggest--gently--that pushing the deadline might allow them to let Yoda's brilliant idea really shine.  (She'd only pulled that one once before, to vital, but costly, success.)  She could gamble, and smile and assure him that everything would be fine.  (It might be.  Miracles happened in Silicon Valley every day.)

"I'll speak to the team leaders," she said instead.  "I'll report back to you by the end of business today."

Yoda merely grunted...but it was a more optimistic grunt.  He slid off her chair and skulked out of her office without another word. 

So much for Tahl's plans to get more sleep. 

She hit the button on her intercom with one finger…badly in need of a manicure, she only noticed now.

"Bant," she sighed into the speaker.  "Give everybody the heads up.  It's going to be one of those days."

* * *

“Morning, dude!”

Quinlan Vos's lab reflected its occupant, in that it was a complete and utter mess that somehow managed to turn out a genius product.  The space was down a set of stairs that, despite the bright sunlight from the floor-to-ceiling windows and pricy marble of the floor, still reminded Tahl of a teenager's basement bedroom.  The open-concept expanse that housed shining, state-of-the-art equipment stank of cheap cigarettes and expensive weed.  Muja laptops stood open on every surface, each part of separate projects, none of them permitted to be disturbed.  Dirty t-shirts advertising obscure bands were strewn over stools; mold grew in paper coffee cups piled on desks.  Tahl guessed that Quin had warned off the cleaning staff, who were probably too afraid that they'd toss away a priceless formula along with the empty Chipotle containers to go near the place.  She'd have to speak to him about it...but not today.  Today, she had bigger problems she needed him to focus on.

It was already hard enough to get Quinlan to focus. 

“Morning,” she replied, already dreading being the bearer of bad news.  As much as she vastly preferred conveying Yoda’s unhappiness _herself_ as opposed to cleaning up the mess he left behind when forced to communicate with his staff directly, she couldn’t say it was her favorite part of her job.  Unlike many bosses she’d had over the years, Tahl didn’t relish telling people they’d fucked up; she liked it best when everybody felt like they were succeeding. 

Quinlan pushed his safety goggles up on his forehead into his tangle of hair to peer up at her.  “That bad, huh?”

Tahl smirked.  At least she and Quin didn’t have to bullshit each other.  “Yoda’s unhappy about the new camera,” she said as plainly as she could.  “We need to turn this around, fast, or at least have a plan, fast, for how we’re going to turn this around, _fast_.”

Quinlan scratched his stubble thoughtfully.  “The thing is, man…”

“I know what the thing is,” Tahl replied wearily.  She picked up a crumpled Augustines shirt left for dead on a stool with the very tips of her fingers to perch daintily on the edge.  “This was not my idea.”

Quinlan leaned against the counter, his formerly white lab coat pressing into a pan of what appeared to be somewhat dated Thai curry.  Tahl didn’t bother to stop him; she knew all his other lab coats were just as dirty.  No one from the press was allowed down in the lab, and this was only one of the many reasons why.

“I don’t like to be negative, or anything,” he said, which in Quinlan’s mellow lexicon translated to raging defeatism, “but in the timeframe he’s asking—”

Tahl raised her hands heavenward, silently, in shared frustration.  It helped, sometimes, in small doses, for her people to know that she wasn’t just a thoughtless mouthpiece for the powers that be; that she, too, sometimes found Yoda’s demands unfair and unreasonable.

But Quinlan, God love him, was a team player…at least on occasion.  He mimicked the gesture.  “He’s the boss,” he sighed, flipping his safety goggles down over his eyes and absently knocking the pan of curry onto the expensive tile floor, an accident he did not appear to notice.  “Let’s prove us both wrong.”

* * *

Six hours, four meetings, and one skipped lunch later, Tahl was tired, and hungry, and frustrated, and more convinced than ever that she was not wrong.

She’d left Quin behind in the lab, to drown his sorrows in green juice and stare at a blank white board, empty of new ideas…and hope.  Her heels tapped impatiently against the floor as she made her way up the stairs and through the lobby, towards a meeting with Yoda that was not going to be pleasant. Her phone rang.  Tahl didn’t recognize the number on sight, although the sequence of numbers indicated the call originated upstairs, in Muja’s corporate offices.  She couldn’t afford not to pick up.

“Hello,” she sighed, trying to inject her voice with a positivity and energy she had lost somewhere around the third failed prototype of the day.

“I understand we have a problem,” a deep, mellifluous voice intoned, and Tahl was relieved…and more exhausted than ever. 

Plo Koon was one of the more reasonable stockholders; if she could convince him—and she stood a better chance than most—he might be able to sway the rest.  But he was also too smart to allow his concerns to be put off by her typical VP bullshit.

She pulled her phone away from her ear, briefly, to check the time.  She was already nearly late; she couldn’t afford to stop and take this call before heading to Yoda’s office.  This would have to be a walking meeting.

Sometimes, it was nice that Yoda was out of the main building, and her hair; others, it was just a long walk through Muja’s busy complex on high heels to get to his fucking office.

She pushed through the double doors, the late afternoon sunlight hitting her weary eyes and temporarily blinding her.  She blinked to clear it, as Plo shared his entirely reasonable concerns, which politics forbade her from admitting she also shared.

“The situation doesn’t seem to be improving,” he finished, and Tahl felt, somewhere beneath her exhaustion, a distinct pang of shame.  She hated to disappoint, to be found wanting.

"I understand that," she said evenly, feeling around her bag for her keys while she walked down the topiary-lined path towards the boulevard.  Yoda never answered his own door; without a scan of her Muja ID badge, she wouldn’t get in.  And Yoda would not consider an unanswered knock a valid reason for missing a meeting.  Death or serious injury, she’d been assured by her predecessor, were considered mere excuses, and pitiful ones at that. 

”But _you_ have to understand,” she continued, “there’s no point in adhering to arbitrary deadlines if we wind up putting out a subpar product--" Where were her keys?  "We'll get killed in PR, and we've all seen how quickly word of faulty technology spreads and starts to affect not only sales in the short term but brand image in the long run—"

She stepped off the sidewalk, her fingers finally closing around the hard edges of the badge.  “I’m not willing to put out a product I know will only serve as SNL fodder, not even if it means sacrificing Black Friday sales—”

And then the world went suddenly silent, as if the earth had tilted on its axis, instantly and without warning, the pull of gravity suddenly a strange and overpowering thing, and Tahl thought, swiftly and clearly, through ringing ears and choking lungs, about the comet that killed the dinosaurs, and if this was what the moment of impact had felt like to them, and then there was nothing but black.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I bet you all thought this was abandoned, but look, an update! Also if anyone is desperately craving more, I have a tag on my Tumblr for this fic: inspiration pics for Tahl's house and Qui's loft, mostly, and occasional updates on how the new chapter is coming, under #liaw

It was a good thing Obi-Wan was such a good house guest, or Qui-Gon would have been ready to kill him.

No, he corrected himself, at least twice a day.  Obi-Wan was not a guest.  Obi-Wan was not temporary.  Obi-Wan lived here now.  

It had barely been a week, and already Qui-Gon was beginning to wish that he himself did not.

Obi-Wan set an alarm on his phone and got himself up every morning in a timely manner.  He showered, leaving not a single ginger hair in the rusty drain or an errant damp towel to stain the cement floor.  (If Qui-Gon happened to have wandered away the bathroom with a stray towel left on the radiator, the offending item would be neatly hung up when he returned, an ostensibly helpful gesture that irritated Qui-Gon to his very core.)  He took the lunch Qui-Gon prepared for him with a pained grimace, although he denied any alternative preferences regarding the choice of food.  (Qui-Gon most often skipped lunch altogether, and he certainly never packed one, and he was admittedly not a culinary expert by any means, but feeding a kid was hardly rocket science…or so he’d thought.  The first day he’d made Obi-Wan a sandwich—or, at least, he’d stuffed some alfalfa sprouts between two pieces of sprouted grain bread he’d found in the freezer—and placed it next to an apple—kids needed fruit, right?—and, proudly, a stack of the Oreos he’d braved the aisles of the grocery store to procure.  Obi-Wan’s reaction had somehow expressed polite gratitude while implying disapproval, a complicated facial expression that, at this point, seemed to be exclusively the manner in which his young roommate was prepared to deal with his new circumstances.)  He grudgingly allowed Qui-Gon to see him onto the subway, and he grudgingly knocked on the door (Qui-Gon still had yet to remember to make a copy of his key) when he returned to the loft.  He retired to his room (“my area” as Obi-Wan referred to it with just a little too much emphasis on the two words, apparently unwilling to designate a space a room without four enclosing walls)…to study, or do his homework, or plot Qui-Gon’s death, or whatever silent activity appeared to occupy him.  Dinner was a quiet affair, the sounds of utensils scraping filling in the gaps where conversation might have taken place.  Silence was something of the reigning order of the day…at least since the introduction of Temple Preparatory Academy into their lives.

It wasn’t as though Qui-Gon harbored some kind of objection to a good education, or to the providers thereof, he told himself.  Perhaps he’d been unhappy in his own premier private secondary school…perhaps he always would have been, even minus the loss of his parents, leaving him reeling and alone; even without Dooku’s distant and dubious guardianship.  Maybe the pursuit of academic knowledge would never have been his particular cup of tea.  He didn’t like to be told things, to have to accept at face value, on faith.  Qui-Gon needed to discover, to beat his own path, to make his own winding way to his own particular truth.  But that didn’t mean everyone needed to feel that way, or to make the same choices he had…

But if Qui-Gon had closed his eyes on pictured a school he would have hated, founded on old money and older families, pretension oozing from the original crown molding, condescension baked into every brick, it would have looked like Temple Prep.

Several days into a more intimate acquaintance with the institution had not helped Qui-Gon to form more friendly feelings.

But it had been on Palpatine’s short list of acceptable Manhattan day schools, and so Qui-Gon had dutifully delivered Obi-Wan to their scheduled appointment for a tour and a “little informal chat,” which Qui-Gon had rightly interpreted to mean ‘rigorous and grueling series of interviews.’     The list had been the culmination of several days of fevered communication between Obi-Wan and his attorney.  Secretly, Qui-Gon had wanted, with a burning desire that embarrassed him, to insist that all calls to Sheev Palpatine be conducted outside his home, but forcing Obi-Wan to huddle outside with his phone like it was a pack of verboten American Spirits seemed insane, even to Qui-Gon, not to mention bordering on child abuse.  He tried to unclench his jaw and remind himself that the stabbing pain behind his eyes at the sound of Palpatine’s voice would pass, or at least be better kept to himself.  But even so, Obi-Wan seemed to know without being told that his lawyer’s presence was unwanted, and had responded by…well.  Perhaps it was unreasonable of Qui-Gon to wish for Obi-Wan’s loyalty in this instance.  Palpatine he had probably known for most of his life; Qui-Gon was a stranger.  He had no interest in airing his history with the man, in earning the pity of a high school freshman with a sad story of lost love.  But no more could he talk about what had happened in Vegas then he could pretend that even hearing his name didn’t make him want to run from the room, the city, the continental US.  And so he found himself wincing through Obi-Wan’s discussion of school options, struggling to express an enthusiasm that felt false, even to him.

The mood at the loft, already not exactly redolent of Bourbon Street on Mardi Gras, had begun to more closely resemble a morgue, and not a talkative one, at that.

On the appointed day, only forty-eight hours into Obi-Wan’s tenure in New York, they had arrived at the address Obi-Wan had carefully copied down from his conversation with Palpatine.  It was only a short walk from the nearest subway stop, a major plus, even Qui-Gon had been about to admit…until he came face to face with the massive set of stairs before the imposing brick building, hung with an immaculate purple and white banner bearing a Latin motto that Qui-Gon couldn’t translate, behind a wrought-iron gate that dwarfed even his tall frame.  Were children always attempting to break out, or was the gate intended to keep out the riffraff, he wondered, looking down self-consciously at the small frayed patch at the hip of his jeans.  Either way, it hardly seemed like the kind of open, supportive environment that they were looking to be a part of.  

“I don’t like it,” he had admitted, just as Obi-Wan had piped up hopefully, “This reminds me of my school back in Boston.”

Conversation had not flourished from that point on.

A boy named Garen (who claimed to be a current member of Obi-Wan’s prospective class but whose perfectly starched blazer, pristine khakis, and spotless loafers would have been more at home on a forty-year-old real estate mogul) had led them on a long and informative tour through the complex of impressively old buildings and sprawling athletic fields, while Obi-Wan asked enthusiastic and pertinent questions and Qui-Gon trailed behind, trying to fend off what felt like an acid flashback of his own youth, every hot afternoon trapped on a track course, every numbing morning stuck in a study carrel at the library.  He was not, he reminded himself, being forced to enroll, only to aid Obi-Wan in doing so…but the sensation felt unpleasantly similar.  At any moment, would he be stopped and asked what the school’s motto was, in Latin and in English?  Was there homework he had forgotten to turn in, an exam he had neglected to prepare for?

There was someone, of course, who would have understood perfectly, who would have been warm and sympathetic, who would have made the whole experience, from the scent of mulch to the donors’ names carved into the stones of the path, seem both uniquely funny and utterly manageable…but Qui-Gon had sworn that he wasn’t going to call her until he could report that he'd done a few things right, and that things were going well (an embarrassingly lofty goal, he saw now) and the knowledge ate away at him, a rare loneliness pulling at the edge of his consciousness, a painful longing for something he was usually moving too fast to feel.

Obi-Wan was taken off to sit in on a class (post-modern literature, Qui-Gon thought, a prospect at which his previously dead-eyed ward had practically glowed) and he found himself alone, absent even the chilly comfort of Obi-Wan’s presence, staring up at the imposing walnut bookshelves that loomed up from the walls of the head of school’s office like shadowy gothic monsters, not a single title upon which Qui-Gon had read.  He had thought it would be a relief to start the interview process, to get the damn thing over with.

That was before he met Jocasta Nu.

The Head of Temple Preparatory Academy had been busy with urgent scholastic matters (apparently) at the start of their appointment, leaving Qui-Gon languishing in an uncomfortable chair before a delicate wood desk.  She opened the door behind him in perfect silence, the flash of her gray hair in his peripheral vision has she moved nimbly around him to sit behind her desk catching him off guard.  It seemed impossible to guess her age; she could have been twenty years older than he was, or a hundred.  Her silver hair was kept off her face in a knot, stabbed with a pair of lacquered sticks.  Her simple dark suit seemed design to put the viewer at ease; her rigid posture and elegant bearing seemed intended to do the opposite.  Ballet classes all through her youth, he guessed.  Upper East Side money.  Had she even attended this school?

The hint of steel in her smile let him know his lapse hadn’t gone unnoticed.  

She folded soft hands with sharp nails on the table.  “Obi-Wan is a very strong candidate.  You must be very proud of him.”

Qui-Gon shifted uncomfortably.   _Proud_  implied a kind of ownership, or at least an involvement going back more than a few odd days.  “He's a very committed student.”

Ms. Nu raised an eyebrow.  “Sheev mentioned your…particular arrangement.”

It should have occurred to Qui-Gon to be prepared to discuss the subject.

It had not.

He tried to swallow his immediate distrust of anyone who was on a first name basis with Palpatine.  

“We’re getting through it.”

Ms. Nu’s smile widened.  “I certainly didn’t mean to imply otherwise,” she said, her tone implying very strongly that, in fact, she had.  “You can rest assured, the entire Temple community will be here to support Obi-Wan during this…difficult time.”

Qui-Gon found his way to his best approximation of a polite smile.  “I would appreciate that.”

“Now, as you might be aware, Temple accepts very few students, and hardly ever once the semester has begun…but there are exceptions, and I think under the circumstances I am prepared to admit Obi-Wan starting immediately, as soon as…certain obligations are agreed to.”

Qui-Gon leaned forward.  “My uncle—”

“—left a trust which will cover his expenses, yes.”  Ms. Nu’s smile was tight.  “I was referring to his stipulation of full access to Obi-Wan’s school records and approval over his class schedule and extracurricular choices.”

He’d known he was going to hate this place.

“And if I refuse?” he asked, idly, already knowing the answer.

“Then you can either cover fifty thousand dollar yearly tuition yourself, or take Obi-Wan elsewhere.”

He wanted, from the depths of his soul, to do just that.  

But Obi-Wan wanted to take post-modern literature.

And would it make a difference, anyway?  Surely every school on Palpatine’s list would come with a smilier bargain with the devil, a note in his file that he might be Obi-Wan’s guardian, but Sheev Palpatine held the strings.

He got to his feet, reaching out his hand across the desk.  Ms. Nu’s was chilly in his.  “I’m glad we understand each other,” he said.

Obi-Wan had started the next day.

They were falling into…not a routine, but a rough sketch of one, the broad strokes and smudged lines of something that might be the next five years of their lives.  Qui-Gon bought food, and Obi-Wan ate it; an unacknowledged but ferocious race was run every morning, as the second man to shower did so in cold water; polite but chilly statements were exchanged; Obi-Wan went to school, and Qui-Gon tried to figure out how to make a living as an international photographer who suddenly couldn’t leave the metropolitan area.  

(“I don’t know what to tell you, Qui-Gon,” Mace had said simply the last time they’d spoken.  “It’s going to take time to find you work you’re suited for in the states.  New York is a small, competitive environment, and you refuse to do photoshoots or sign contracts, and that’s what most of the work I have here is.  I’ll call when I find something.”  So far, needless to say, he had not.)

Qui-Gon repotted his plants, and he hefted bags of Obi-Wan’s crips blazers and starched pants to the laundromat, and he grocery shopped, and he tried not to think too much about what lay ahead, or what exactly it would look like.

Today hadn’t been a  _bad_  day, Qui-Gon told himself, dropping a bag of chamomile tea into a chipped mug of hot water, luxuriating in the late-night silence of the loft, after Obi-Wan had gone to bed.  It could have been worse.  He had survived; Obi-Wan had survived.  Maybe, if he could rack up enough days like that, the task of taking care of an unhappy teenager would start to feel less overwhelming, less impossible, and maybe then…

When the phone rang, he thought at first it must be Obi-Wan’s.  

No one ever called him this late.

He didn’t recognize the number flashing on the screen, but then that hardly narrowed it down; he never remembered phone numbers, and he never remembered to program new contacts into his phone.  If Tahl hadn’t put his number in herself when she gave him the thing, he wouldn't have hers, either…

Was it the same area code?  His heart beat faster, even as he told himself it was probably a buyer out in Los Angeles, or a magazine in Monterey, that wanted to get in touch about his photos…he needed the work, he’d better take the call now, instead of waiting until morning…

“Hello?” he said.

There was the slightest pause.  “Mr. Jinn?”

He did not recognize the soft female voice, and no one bearing glad tidings ever called him  _Mr. Jinn_.  

“My name is Bant Eerin.  I’m Tahl Uvain’s assistant.”  She paused, and Qui-Gon knew, with perfect, instant clarity, the way you can feel it in the tension in the air, the instant before a crack of thunder rumbles above, or the way you know the scent of the earth when the sky is about to open up and soak you with rain, exactly what she was going to say.  

“I wasn’t sure if I should call, but I had your number from booking your flight to Boston, and I thought you should know: there’s been an accident.”

He had thought, once or twice—in a tricky situation in a far-off part of the world, when the idea of something happening to him was not quite likely, but no longer an entirely theoretical one—about whether the news would reach her, if she’d never know, if Mace would think to pick up the phone, about what she might feel.   _Sad_ , he’d wanted to think, crouched against a barricade, his camera held tight in his fingers, as gunfire raged every-closer.  Not devastated, of course—he was too pragmatic to hope for that…but sad, with maybe a tinge of gentle regret, a soft sorrow that would linger with her all day, like the scent of an old perfume or the pain of a tension headache, to be entirely gone by morning.  

He had never once imagined the reverse.  

“What happened?” he made himself ask, forcing the words through cold lips, the shape of the syllables hard and painful.  

“She was hit by a car crossing the street,” Bant said, quickly, as though she needed to say it swiftly or not at all, the words hitting Qui-Gon like shrapnel, embedding themselves in his chest.  “She’s at the hospital now, and everything that can be done is being done—”

He had thought, at the time, that walking away from that office in Vegas, leaving Tahl and his dream of their life together behind forever, was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do.  Forcing the next word out was worse.  

He closed his eyes.  “But?”

Bant’s voice was no longer so clear, her words less practiced.  “The impact…she was thrown…”  She paused, and in the silence Qui-Gon could hear the whisper of voices behind her, the beeping of monitors.  “Her injuries are fairly superficial, they’re saying—she was lucky—except that she hit her head…pretty hard.  She hasn’t regained consciousness yet, which isn’t unexpected, but the doctors aren’t sure…if she’ll wake up, or what kind of…brain damage we might expect if she does.”

Qui-Gon could not speak.  

“But they’re doing everything they can; Yoda’s yelling at people and flying in specialists and—”  

But all he could think about was sitting in the backseat of a white Honda in the lot behind Exeter,  the driving instructor droning on about the proper angel of mirrors; Tahl behind the wheel, impatiently back over an orange cone…”In real life it wouldn’t have been there,” she’d informed their furious instructor, flapping a hand, while Qui-Gon doubled over with laughter behind her…

“Where is she?” Qui-Gon interrupted.  He tried again, more gently: “Which hospital did they take her to?”

Bant gave him the name and room number, which Qui-Gon needed her to repeat while he dug through a pile of papers for a pen.  He scrawled the information on his palm, the ink failing, pressing nearly hard enough to draw blood.

“I’ll call you if…if there’s any change,” she promised.  

Qui-Gon’s hand tightened around the phone.  “If she wakes up before I get there, tell her…”  

He had not, in almost twenty years, known what he wanted to say to Tahl.  He could not ask a stranger to tell her what he could not.

“…tell her I’m on my way.”

* * *

Qui-Gon had been awakened, their second night back in New York, by the sounds of a frustrated Obi-Wan tacking up a curtain with pushpins to close off his loft space from the rest of the apartment.  Lacking either a strident objection or a more promising solution, Qui-Gon had rolled over and gone back to sleep, and refrained from commenting in the morning.  

The room was dark now, and no sounds escaped the thin barrier.  Qui-Gon pushed the material aside impatiently.  “Obi-Wan?”

There was no movement from the blankets piled on the narrow bed.  

Qui-Gon stepped closer.  “Obi-Wan,” repeated more loudly, poking a finger at his charge’s shoulder.  He didn’t have any time to waste on good manners.  Every moment he lost here was a moment he wasn’t with Tahl.  “Obi-Wan, I need you to get up now.”

“Is it morning already?” Obi-Wan mumbled, his face still pressed into his pillow.  “Did I forget to set my alarm?”

Qui-Gon sighed impatiently.  “No, it’s not morning,” he forced himself to explain, every word costing him a conscious effort.  “But I need you to get up now.  I need you to pack some clothes.  We need to get to the airport.”

“What?” Obi-Wan mumbled, snuggling further under his quilt.  

“Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gon repeated, deliberately keeping his voice level.  “We have to get out of here, and we have to get out of here now.  This is not negotiable.”

Obi-Wan sat up, slowly.  “Am I going back to Boston?”

Qui-Gon could not tell if Obi-Wan sounded pleased or disappointed by the prospect.  

“No,” he said shortly.  “We’re going to California.  I’ll explain everything on the way—”

Obi-Wan reached for his phone, flicking the screen awake to check the time.  He crossed his arms over his chest.  “I have school in the morning.”

Would she even still be alive, when he finally arrived? When he ran into her room, out of breath, chest aching, would the bed be empty?  Or would it contain something that looked like Tahl, a silent, chilly facsimile, blind to his presence, deaf to his apologies?  Would his brusque self-righteousness on the phone, those last calls gone to voicemail, be the last time they ever spoke, the final, paltry coda to a conversation begun almost in childhood?  Would the last words he ever spoke to her be whispered through the lacquered lid of a coffin?

Would he have to sit through a funeral without her steady presence at his side, a burial without her warmth and irreverence?  

They weren't a part of each other’s lives anymore.  He had come to accept that.  But to live in a world that had lost her and still went on turning anyway, empty of her relentless mind and quicksilver laughter…

Qui-Gon struggled not to start throwing Obi-Wan’s things into a bag for him.  “Not tomorrow, you don’t.”

“I have a Latin test,” Obi-Wan insisted, with the same intensity a cardiologist might have referenced a scheduled open-heart surgery.  “I have my own life, you know.  I’m not going to go running off across the country every time you’re stricken by some kind of  _whim_ —”

“Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gon interrupted.  He forced out a breath, harsh in his ears.  “Obi-Wan.  It’s an emergency.  There’s been an accident.  Tahl…”

Once he said it, would it become true?  Was he still hoping that it wasn’t, that somehow there had been a terrible, unlikely mistake?  That when he stepped off the plane in Los Angeles, Tahl would be there, arms crossed, pissed at him and perfectly fine?  

Obi-Wan had fallen silent.

“They don’t know if she’s going to make it,” a stranger with Qui-Gon’s voice said.  “I need…I have to—”

Obi-Wan was already nodding, already pushing back the covers and climbing out of bed, one hand reaching for his backpack.  “Give me five minutes,” he promised.  

* * *

“She was brought in here last night,” Qui-Gon repeated, leaning across the nurse’s station, using every bit of his height to every inch of its advantage.  “Tahl Uvain.  U-V-A-I-N.  I need her room number,  _now_.”

Outside, it was still pitch black, west coast time making it about three in the morning.  A seasoned traveler, Qui-Gon wasn’t easily thrown by a swift change in time zones, but the darkness here gnawed at him, even the sky somehow  _wrong_  here.  Behind him, Obi-Wan yawned, practically swaying on his feet.  The earliest flight to LAX hadn’t left until just after midnight, and he had barely made it onto the plane before falling asleep.  He had slept most of the five-hour flight to Los Angeles, his forehead pressed against the tiny window, oblivious to the darkness outside.  Qui-Gon had envied him.  He had sat up the entire flight, while the rest of the passengers snored and dozed around him, gripping his hands together helplessly, barely restraining himself from pacing the aisle, willing the plane to move faster, the sun to rise, the earth to shift to get him to Tahl.  Then had come the grinding delays to make their way out of the labyrinthine airport, then the interminable cab ride to the hospital, and now yet more waiting.  He was so close to her now, so close…

The nurse frowned at him doubtfully.  “Are you a relative?”

He had lost whatever patience he might once have possessed hours ago; he could feel, physically, the passage of time, in a way he never had before, every instant lost echoing in his bones.

“I’m…her husband,” Qui-Gon said, with supreme confidence, as though he’d said it every day of the past twenty years.  It was close enough, and it was the only version of the truth that was going to get him upstairs, and that was all that mattered tonight.  

He ignored Obi-Wan’s quizzical eyebrows, the clear confusion forming on his face.  If Obi-Wan knew what was good for him, he’d keep that feeling to himself.  

“I was in New York—on business—” true enough, Qui-Gon felt, true enough “—when I got the call, and I’ve just flown all the way across the country, and I need to see her,  _now_.”

It worked, as Qui-Gon had known it would, and even so it seemed to take an eternity for his scrubbed adversary to type Tahl’s name into the computer.  And then he was running for the stairs (not the elevator, too slow), the words  _room 513_  still forming in the air.

“But I thought—” Obi-Wan protested as he followed behind Qui-Gon, breaking off as his shorter legs struggled to keep up with Qui-Gon’s longer strides.  “You said you weren’t—together—”

“I did say that,” Qui-Gon replied absently, his footfalls heavy on the cement stairs.

He threw open the door to the fifth floor; Obi-Wan swift behind him.  

“Then why did you just tell them you were married?” Obi-Wan demanded.  “Is that even legal?”

“Call the cops and find out,” he muttered, scanning the room numbers posted outside identical doors.  511…512…he was close…so close…

513.

He might have said “Wait here,” or he might have only thought it; everything seemed to be moving slower now, frozen in the space between the busy flow of the hallway and his hollow dread of what lay inside.  

He did not remember pushing open the door, but suddenly he was inside.

He grabbed onto the sight of the room slowly, in fragments, like a set of jagged pieces that didn’t fit together, broken glass instead of a puzzle: bright lines pulsing on monitors, a harsh, mechanical beeping, a shape on a bed.

For one heart-stopping moment, he could not tell if she was alive or dead.  

Then the flashing lights and coalesced into the shape of a heart beat, and he was hitting his knees against metal as he sank down onto the edge of the bed, reaching for the shape of a familiar hand.

Her body was covered by blankets, cotton obscuring curves he had once known as well as his own body, hiding injuries he could only guess at underneath.  Were the legs she'd wrapped around him in New York broken now, bones shattered into dust?  Was the skin he’d kissed so many times raw and open, held together with thread and wire?  Or was the damage further concealed still: bleeding he couldn't see, organs failing, shutting down?  

He ran his fingers up her arm, bare beneath a faded hospital gown.  She was still, her chest barely rising and falling with each breath.  There was a bandage on one side of her face, smothering her left cheekbone, but it was her beautiful skin peeking out beneath, her cool fingertips he raised to his lips.  “I’m here,” he whispered fiercely.  “I’m here now.  I’m not going to let you go.”

Or was it too late for that?  Her assistant had said  _brain damage_ …what if there was nothing left of her at all?  Had something essential already departed, lost in an instant on the cracked blacktop of a busy road?  If he waited here long enough, would Tahl open her eyes, press his hand back, mumble a wry remark about what it took to get his attention these days?  Or was the heartbeat he heard beeping on the screens above his head false hope?

Tahl would not have wanted to be kept alive on machines.  But he could not bear it if they let her go.

And who would make that decision?  Her family?  Her distant father, her preoccupied mother?  Her brother, Kit, just a kid when Qui-Gon had last seen him?  Or was there someone else, someone she hadn’t mentioned in New York or Boston, that she had conversations like that with now, someone she trusted with her life?  Whoever it was, they would not have to care about Qui-Gon’s feelings on the subject.  He had lost that privilege long ago.

He kissed her fingers, and he prayed she could feel it.

“I think she can hear us,” a soft female voice said from over his shoulder.

Qui-Gon started, badly.  He had not taken in the presence of anyone else in the room.

But of course Tahl was not alone.

A girl with pale red hair and dark circles under red eyes was curled up in the chair on the other side of the bed, a tablet in her lap and a slim phone in her hand.  

“I’m Bant,” she added.  “Tahl’s assistant.  I’m the one who called you?”

He’d revealed too much in front of this stranger, and he didn’t care.

“Right,” he said belatedly.  “I want to tell you how much I—”

The tiniest pressure, the very lightest touch, pressed his fingers.

He moved closer to her, any thought of anyone else forgotten, even as Bant moved to clutch her other hand.  “Tahl?” he called, gently, keeping soft pressure on her hand.  “Tahl, come back; you’re safe now, it’s going to be okay—”

There was the faintest movement beneath her eyes, dark lashes fluttering.  

“That’s right,” Bant coached, her voice soothing.  “Just keep coming back, you’re doing it…”

Her eyes struggled open, those beautiful green eyes he’d feared he’d never see again.  He could have wept with gratitude, but there was something…

His eyes met Bant’s, silently, and he knew she knew it, too.

Tahl’s weak grip pulled him closer.  “Qui?” she whispered.  “Where…where are you?”


	8. Chapter 8

It came in flashes:

_Darkness._

_They’d climbed out their dorm windows and sneaked through Exeter’s silent, shuttered-up campus, through the door he’d propped open earlier (on a bathroom pass from AP Physics) up to the roof of the science building.  It was after midnight; they should both have been in their dorms, in bed, lights out.  If they were caught, there would be phone calls home, at least; suspensions, probably; disciplinary action, possibly…_

_He squeezed her hand, the familiar contours of his face hidden by shadows.  “Good?”_

_He meant the view of the sky, the blanket he was unfolding from his backpack, the flashlight that would be their only illumination until the meteor shower began._

_She squeezed his fingers back.  “Perfect,” she promised._

_She knew, even if he didn’t, that tonight would be the night._

 

Voices, unfamiliar ones…her body was so weary, her eyelids so heavy.  Had they fallen asleep?  Had they been found out?  She tried to call out for him, but the words got lost in her throat….

 

_Her first day at Muja: the early-morning hush, the stillness before most of the employees, even Yoda, had begun to trickle in.  Sitting down behind her desk for the very first time, adrenaline flooding her veins, her heart pounding against her ribs…this was it, every college party she’d missed to study, every late evening at every office, every sleepless night, this was where it had led…_

_She’d never been more proud, or more terrified…_

 

_His blue eyes bright, his hands cupping her face, there in a dim, smoke-filled casino, retirees with walkers camped out at nickel machines, strangers milling around them, her heart thumping to the beat of the canned music, the metallic clang of slot machines: “Marry me.”_

 

_Four interviews in: a slight girl with long red hair she kept nervously pushing behind her ears, bitten-down fingernails on the pale, almost clammy hand in Tahl’s.  She was beginning, perhaps, finally to relax, or at least to be able to make eye contact, when a call interrupted them (no assistant yet left Tahl answering her own phones); her pen drying up, her fingers hunting for a new one to transcribe a call-back number; Bant, repeating all fourteen digits easily from memory; the heartbreakingly proud look on her face when Tahl offered her the job…_

 

_In movies, the parents sat you down on the couch and told you and your brother that they’d stopped loving each other, but still loved you just as much; in real life, it was Adi’s signature Chanel Number Five fragrance clouded with the sharp scent of Gordon’s Gin, as she spent weeks behind a closed door, refusing to leave her queen-sized bed, and Finis packing up without a word, sleeping all night now at the apartment he’d secretly purchased for his secretary months ago…_

 

_“Maybe we made a mistake,” she forced herself to say, her gaze on the gleaming wood of the long table, not the naked betrayal on Qui-Gon’s face or the pleasure brightening Palpatine’s eyes._

_If Dooku pulled his money, if Qui-Gon couldn’t go to school…she couldn’t let him give that up for her.  He’d resent her, and she’d lose him…she’d seem how that story played out.  They didn’t have to get married now, did they?  They had their whole lives ahead of them.  They could graduate and get jobs and elope the next day.  She loved him.  He loved her.  Nothing could change that._

_Beneath the table, Qui-Gon let go of her hand._

_She knew, then, deep in her bones, before the words were even forming in her mind, that she’d been the one to make a mistake._

She tried to call him back, to change her mind, but it was too late, it was always too late…

_“I’m here,” he said, and suddenly he was at her side again, his hand warm in hers.  “I’m here now.  I’m not going to let you go.”_

Maybe it was all a bad dream; maybe he had never turned and walked away; maybe—

_“Tahl, come back…you’re safe now…”_

But why would he be calling for her, if he was right there with her?  She could feel his hand cupping hers; why couldn’t she see him?  Why couldn’t she move?

_Bant’s soft voice, a lifeline in the murky haze: “Just keep coming back, you’re doing it…”_

Her eyes were fluttering open, but the darkness didn’t fade; it sharpened, colored over everything with a film of black.  

She could hear Qui-Gon’s sharp intake of breath, Bant’s more damning silence.  

Maybe this, now, was the bad dream.  

She blinked, trying to bring the world into focus; she tried to feel for her eyes, but Qui-Gon and Bant, hovering above her, had a firm grip on both her hands…

It had to be a dream.  Why would Qui-Gon be here?  He was in New York, on the other side of the country, ignoring her phone calls, probably for good this time…

“Tahl,” he said, his voice gentle, closer this time.  “You were in an accident.  You were hit by  a car.  You’re in the hospital now.”

But that wasn’t possible either; she’d remember...

She tried to cast her mind back, tried to latch on to the last moment that was clear in her memory, but everything seemed hazy, clouded by the same darkness that floated in front of her eyes.  

“But you’re all right,” Bant’s clear voice promised, her tone just as even and soothing as if she were reassuring Tahl that she had plenty of room in her schedule to fit in an extra meeting.  “I don’t know why you can’t see right now, but I’m going to get the doctor, and we’ll figure it out.  I promise.”

Tahl made herself nod, the motion strange and awkward in the dark.  She listened to the sound of Bant’s footsteps fading, her kitten heels clicking against the hard floors.  Qui-Gon was saying something, the mellifluous tones of his voice low and earnest, but it was too hard, suddenly, to focus on the words, to pick out meanings from the haze in her mind.  She closed her eyes and let herself sink to the bottom, away from the complicated words, and the beeping and hissing of machines, and the knot in her stomach that said that everything, everything had changed.

* * *

It came in pieces:

_Cerebral contusion to the occipital lobe.  Dislocated shoulder.  The cut on your face will heal, but scarring is likely._

_Maybe once the swelling in your brain goes down...._

Tahl’s entire body hurt; her skin burned like it had been scraped raw; her head throbbed violently, like the back of her skull was a rocket trying to reach escape velocity from her spine.  

_How do you feel?_

“Like the reason I stopped drinking tequila,” she rasped, because the laughter made her feel less like they were all at a funeral, and she was the corpse.  

I _t was an intern, coming back from a Starbucks run.  He reached over to catch a latte before it tipped over, and when he looked back at the road and saw you, he was going too fast to stop.  He’s sorry.  He’s so sorry._

Doctors came and went, strange, dispassionate voices that Tahl tried to match with a set of unfamiliar names, with references to international hospitals and cutting-edge research programs.  

“Yoda brought in specialists from all over the world,” Bant confided in an undertone, from her permanent position hovering beside Tahl’s bed.  “He’s really been worried.”  

Tahl snorted.  “If I died he’d have to interview people, which he hates, for my job, which he doesn’t understand.”

_Cortical blindness, unlikely to resolve._

_Your eyes are fine, but your brain can’t interpret the information.  If it were going to improve, we’d be seeing positive signs by now.  I’m sorry._

Bant giggled, then sobered.  “He was actually really upset,” she scolded, gently.

“I’m sure he was,” Tahl agreed.  “It’ll be much easier to replace me now that I’m here to explain to his candidates what I actually do.”

_We’ve fired Balog.  The intern.  Your lawyer wants to know if you’re interested in pursuing legal action.  The police want to know if you’ll be pressing charges._

“I am one of the highest-paid executives in Silicon Valley,” Tahl answered wearily, for what felt like the thousandth time.  “I will not be suing an intern.  And somebody should find him another job.  Call my friend Aayla at Google, they always need qualified interns.”

_Head injuries as serious as this can be fatal…if the damage had been sustained any lower, and your brain stem had been affected, we’d be talking to your loved ones about taking you off a ventilator now._

_You’ve been very lucky, really._

* * *

She opened her eyes to more darkness.

“It’s good to have you with us again,” Qui-Gon whispered, his hand coming up to brush her face.  His other hand was warm around hers.  “Tahl, I—”

“What are you doing here?” she interrupted.  

“You were in an accident,” he said slowly, his voice rising, as though he were puzzled.  

“I caught that,” she managed, her voice a husky approximation of its usual clear, confident tone, “but why are  _you_  here?”

He was silent.  Without seeing his face, she couldn’t tell if he was hurt, or just confused.  

“Your assistant called me,” he said finally.  “We got on the first plane, we—“

“We?” she repeated, momentarily baffled.  A terrible—but not unlikely—thought formed in the fuzzy recesses of her brain.  “Qui, please tell me that you did not take a thirteen-year-old out of a new school to rush him to my deathbed.”

An awkward cough from a slight distance away quirked her mouth into a wry smile.  “Obi-Wan, I suppose I should be grateful we’re not meeting at a funeral for the second time.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Qui-Gon chided.

“Qui!” she exclaimed.  “What could you possibly have been thinking?”

“It’s okay,” a light male voice, only barely familiar, answered.  “It got me out of a Latin test, anyway.”

Laughter bubbled up from her chest.  “I’m glad I could help.  Let me know when the final is, and I’ll see if I can get hit by by a bus.”

Obi-Wan snorted.  

“That’s not funny,” Qui-Gon scolded.  It was unclear to Tahl which one of them he was correcting.

“When you get hit by a Volvo, you can decide what’s funny,” she informed him.

She tried to pull herself up a little straighter, the effort sending an icy stab of pain through the back of her head.  

“Don’t try to move just yet,” he said quickly. “There’ll be plenty of time for that.”

She wanted to argue, but she was tired suddenly…so tired….

She sank back into sleep, Qui-Gon’s warm palm cupping her cheek.

* * *

Yoda’s step was easy to recognize, the tread of his sneakers heavy against the tile as he made his way into her room.  

She wondered if there were press outside, if Yoda had shrugged his way past reporters, or if they had contained the story, and he had just put on a baseball cap and walked through the main door.  It didn’t matter anymore, not really.  That time in her life was over now.

She heard the soft thud of his body settling on the chair by her bed, the slight squeal of the plastic.  “Good to see you looking better, it is,” he grunted.

Tahl did not want to hazard a guess at how bad she had looked before for this to be true.  Perhaps he just meant that she was conscious, and sitting up.

He had informed her, through Bant, that he was coming to see her, and Bant had retreated discreetly.  Tahl was grateful.  This was going to be unpleasant enough.  She didn’t need to do it in front of witnesses.  

“Thank you,” she said.  “And thank you for everything you’ve done.  I’m very grateful.”

There was a silence, in which she assumed that Yoda, never good with praise or gratitude, was shrugging, and had yet to realize that she couldn’t see it.  

“But I appreciate—I’m sure we both appreciate—what a delicate time this is.”  For as many times as Tahl had mentally rehearsed this, it shouldn’t still have been hard—so hard—to get the words out.  “I’ll have Bant draft my letter of resignation and have it on your desk in the morning.”

It was a relief to have it out, finally, beyond the torture of second thoughts and the false hope of last-minute reprieves.  Now all she had to do was nod through Yoda’s fumbling acknowledgment, and sign whatever Bant put in front of her (a daunting proposition, suddenly, but she supposed they’d muddle through it), and then...well, Tahl would have plenty of free time to figure out the rest of her life.  

She’d tried to picture it: sitting at her kitchen island every morning, nursing her single cup of coffee for hours, alone in the dark and the quiet, with nowhere to be and nothing to do.  No calls to answer or emails to field, no Quinlan to keep in line, no board members to appease or ad campaigns to veto or…

“No.”

“I beg your pardon?” Tahl managed.  

Her boss (former boss, she remained herself sternly), an ever-unpredictable soul, apparently did not feel she was doing enough for him in this difficult time.  Did he want her resignation now?  In blood?  Was he planning to troop her replacements past her bedside, for her approval?

(That last wasn’t a bad idea, she supposed.  Maybe she’d lost her job, but she still had a substantial amount of money tied up in company stock, which would be far more valuable if the company prospered...maybe it would behoove her to interview a few candidates, after all.)

“Accept your resignation, I do not,” Yoda grunted.  

She closed her eyes, briefly, in exasperation.  “I can’t imagine—”

“Your contract requires six months notice,” Yoda’s most reasonable tone informed her.

“Yes,” Tahl allowed, “….that’s true.  But….”

She had not thought she’d have to spell it out so clearly for Yoda, but then a number of things had taken her by surprise lately.

“We both know…. _I_  know that you don’t want me to run your company like this.  Do you want me approving designs I can’t see, and walking into walls in front of shareholders?”

It shouldn’t have hurt to hear it out loud, in her own voice, but it did.  She hoped that Yoda, only erratically observant, wasn’t paying attention to the effort it was taking to keep her voice steady.  

Another pause, in which she was left to imagine another shrug, or possibly that Yoda had pulled out his phone and forgotten their conversation completely.  (There was precedent.)

“Figure it out, I assume you will,” he said finally.  

“But—”

She heard his body slide off the chair and his feet hit the tile floor.  “Six months, I have,”  he said, his voice fading as he moved to the door.  “Expect you at your desk on Monday, I will.”

She was still speechless when Bant tiptoed in a short while later (it was so hard to tell the passage of time now….were there watches that read the time aloud?  She’d have to find out…)

The mattress dipped gently as Bant perched on the edge of her bed.  “Is it….how did it go?” she asked, the way you would inquire about the success of a cremation, or possibly a public beheading.  

Tahl struggled to articulate her tangle of frustration into words.  “He is insisting,” she said at last, “that according to the terms of my contract, I owe him six months notice, and so we will all have to struggle through, pretending I can still do this job, until late July, unless he comes to his senses and fires me before then.”

She was startled to feel Bant throw her arms around her, her slim arms hugging Tahl’s shoulders.  It hurt, but Tahl couldn’t bring herself to let it show.  “I knew he couldn’t just let you quit,” Bant sniffled.  “It’s going to be fine, I have it all figured out: Quin is going to fix your phone and your computer and everything at your house so it reads out to you, and we’re going to get a Braille reader for your phone—did you know those were a thing?—and I’m going to move into your guest room for the time being, and it’s all going to work out, I swear.”

Tahl was touched by her loyalty and optimism, entirely misplaced though it might be.  

“I can’t let you do that,” she said gently.  “For one thing, you’re a PA, not a home healthcare worker, and for another, we agreed that you were going to spend less time working, not more.”

“Why do I need to work less?” Bant argued.

“So when you’re thirty-seven and walk into traffic, you’ll have a family and a life, and your assistant won’t have to call your ex-boyfriend to come stand uselessly at your bedside,” Tahl informed her, an edge to her patient tone.

“That wasn’t why,” Bant said, her voice suddenly soft.  “Why I called him, I mean.”

Tahl raised an eyebrow, and then remembered that the formerly intimidating gesture had probably lost most of its potency.  “Then why—”

“You were calling for him,” Bant almost whispered.  “When they brought you in.  You were unconscious, and you were calling for him.”

Tahl closed her eyes.  “Did…”  She cleared her voice, suddenly unsteady.  “Did he hear me?”

“No,” Bant promised.  “And I didn’t tell him.  I didn’t even know you’d ever been together like that.  But you called his name, and I thought….maybe you needed him.  And maybe you did.  I mean…you only woke up when he came.  He held your hand, and he told you to come back, and you did.”

 _Coincidence_ , Tahl wanted to say.   _Meaningless_.  But she couldn’t help but think that somewhere inside she had known he was there, that she had heard his voice and responded to it, the same way she still dreamed about Las Vegas, the same way her body had still melded to his in that elevator, as though no time at all had passed.

“If I let you move in with me,” she said finally, “will you promise not to tell anyone that story?”

Bant sighed, gently.  “Of course not.  But Tahl…”

She was afraid, for the second time today, and the third time in her life, that she would cry in front of someone she worked with.  

“It was a long time ago,” she managed, “what was between us, and it was over a long time ago, too.”

“Okay,” Bant said, in a tone that did not indicate doubt so much as shout it.  “Let’s work on logistics, then.  I have a template for an email to send to all your upcoming meetings…”

* * *

She must have fallen asleep, because she was waking up, suddenly, her bandaged cheek pressed painfully into the harsh hospital pillowcase.  

“Sorry, Bant,” she mumbled, propping herself up again. “Scheduling conflicts are apparently not fascinating to me just now.  What did I miss?”

“Not Bant,” Qui-Gon’s voice said from close by her bedside.  “Just me.”

She let out a breath.  “Where’s Obi-Wan?”

“I sent him to the cafeteria,” Qui-Gon said.  “With money, even.”

She pulled herself up a little straighter, ignoring the pain in her shoulder.  “And they say parenting is hard.”

Silence stretched between them.  It would have been like that night on the rooftop, staring up at the dark together...except, Tahl reminded herself, she was the only one in the dark, and tonight would not be ending beneath a single blanket, the two of them curled together against the cold.

“Tahl,” Qui-Gon began, just as she started to say his name.

She didn’t let him go first.  There were things she had to say, and sooner rather than later.  This had gone on long enough.  

“I’m sorry Bant called you all the way out here,” she said.  “I appreciate that you came, I do, but I know that you have to get back.”

Qui-Gon sighed.  She heard the rustle of fabric against his jeans as he leaned closer, his elbows on his knees.  “Tahl, why is it always so hard between us?”

Because if Bant hadn’t developed an untimely sentimental streak, he could be back in New York, remembering her in a nice dress and heels that brought them eye to eye, not in a hospital gown with stitches in her face and a dark place in her brain.  

Because she could never say yes enough to make up for the only time it had counted, the one time she had said no.  

Because he might care for her, but he could never forgive her.

“What were you going to say?” she asked at last.  

“I heard they’re letting you go home tomorrow,” he said, a touch of resignation in his voice.  “I thought, if you didn’t mind, Obi-Wan and I would stick around for the next couple of days.  Through the weekend, anyway.”

She knew it was a bad idea, even before she said it, but she knew that she was going to say it, anyway.  At some later time, off of painkillers and possibly in therapy, she might want to ponder why the sensation felt so familiar and so specific to the presence of Qui-Gon Jinn, but not now.  

“You can stay at my house,” she offered.  

“Are you sure you wouldn’t mind?”

Tahl was fairly positive that she would, but she’d been the one to suggest it.  “I have plenty of room.”

“Bant mentioned she’d be staying with you for a while,” he ventured.  “I don’t mind sleeping on the floor so she can get settled.”

“I have plenty of room,” she repeated.  

“For three guests?”

“I own a four-bedroom condo, yes,” Tahl said, feeling a defensive edge coming into her words and unable to prevent it from bleeding into her tone.  

Was she supposed to live in a one-bedroom loft, just because he did?  Was she expected to justify the expense of her own money, or the demands or her life, of which he had long made it clear he wanted no part?

And why, now of all times, did she still care what he thought?

“I’m sorry I didn’t call you back,” he said instead, into the silence.  “Things with Obi-Wan were just....”

She flapped a hand in what she hoped was his general direction.  “It wasn’t important.”

It might have been, once, but all of that was over now.  There would be no more private hotel meet-ups, no more secluded stays.  She knew, already, from the quiet sorrow in his voice, that he would never be able to look at her without pain or pity again.

Maybe it was for the best.  For both of them.  Maybe, finally, it was time to put what they were, what she had once hoped they could be, to bed for good.  

He let out a breath.  “Tahl....I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re okay.”

 _Okay_.  Was that what she was?

“I’m a little tired,” she said, turning her face away from him as she settled back into pillows.  “Would you mind...”

She listened to the sound of the plastic creaking as he rose from the chair.  “I should check on Obi-Wan, anyway,” he said.  “You get some rest.”

She felt the swift touch of his hand on hers as he passed by her bed, heard the sound of his heavy footsteps fading away.

And finally, finally, alone, she let herself cry.  


End file.
